Fairy Rings on Cleeve Common

Photographed up on Cleeve Common at the start of this year's mushroom season was a large fairy ring of Agaricus campestris. (Feild Mushroom) Fairy Rings are biological formations caused by fungi, detected by the regular arrangement of sporophores and/or circular bands of changing vegetation that are caused by dense mycelial fronts radially expanding in the soil. A fairy ring starts when the mycelium of a mushroom falls in a favourable spot and sends out a subterranean network of hyphae. The hyphae grow out from the spore evenly in all directions, forming a circular mat of underground hyphal threads. 

The one we found was the largest I've ever seen, requiring a wide lens to be captured fully.