Smashing Fungi

WHAT an amazing autumn! It’s warm still, the colour has been amazing and up here in Yorkshire at least we had a bumper harvest of chestnuts. They were not big perhaps but sweet and entirely pest free and could be scooped up by the handfull as they were so plentiful.

Bending down to the ground to collect chestnuts meant I was able to notice all the fungi pushing up everywhere through the leaf litter.

I spotted plenty of new ones again this year including “common” strap fungus, Helvella Crispa, punching up through the bracken with small, pugnacious fists. There was also an almost transparent,veined grey toadstool trembling on a delicate stem.

I discovered a beautiful crop of edible honey fungus which are apparently good eating. Unfortunately by the time I had gone back home for my camera, someone had smashed them flat.

I hate this kind of ignorance and stupidity and one day perhaps I should see if the people who look after the woods would be interested in creating a fungi trail with information about them.

I think people should be told that fungi have been round for so much longer than we have and (I desperately hope) they may survive us. In the meantime, they deserve respect because without them this planet would not be the green and beautiful place it was before humans really started to get it wrong.

Without them we possibly wouldn’t even exist.

So, here is my annual tribute to an amazing lifeform.

Amazing Year For Fungi

2021 may not have been a good year for humans but the mild and damp weather in the UK this autumn has been brilliant for fungi. Every chance I get I have been out in the local woods, awed by the tiny weird worlds that you can find if you are prepared to get down on your hands and knees and really look.

It does take some looking too. Walking on the path I often see nothing but then I dive into the undergrowth and find wonderful fungi. I am glad they pass mostly unoticed because all too often I see that ignorant people have knocked down mushrooms for the fun of it or with some misplaced idea that they are doing the world a favour.

Without fungi woodlands as we know it would not exist as there would be nothing to break the fallen leaves and branches down into soil. Some also live in complicated symbiotic relationships with other plants which would stuggle without them.

It would be ironic too if this stupid vandalism was to kill off a fungi that could cure cancer. That’s not hyperbole, there are indications that this one shrinks tumours.

Sparassis Crispa or Cauliflower of the Woods

Another thing I have noticed this year is how many fungi I have seen for the first time, that my book printed in the 1960s says are common. These unloved and overlooked organisms are increasingly rare and it would be so easy to loose them before we have begun to scratch the surface of understanding them.

For this reason I have decided not to harvest them for food (calories are cheap and easily come by, we don’t need these) and to even avoid turning them over to have a look at the spores for identification. If you want to look underneath, perhaps try a makeup mirror but please leave them alone because they need all the help they can get.

I hope you enjoy this selection of photographs taken around Sheffield this autumn.

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  Utterly cute but I don’t know what these are
  

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  puffballs

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  Fungi helping break down a fallen oak branch
  

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  Amathyst Deceivers, edible inspite of their name

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  Amanita Muscaria, everyone’s idea of a proper toadstool

Trooping Crumble Cap, otherwise known as Fairy Ink Caps