I once went to see our GP with a very painful toe joint. He examined my foot thoughtfully and eventually said “you’ve got Hallux rigidus” “Yes, I said, “it’s a stiff toe, but can you do anything?” There are two schools of thought on Latin; one suggests that it’s the way that some professionals want to sound as if they know something that we don’t. The other school takes a more pragmatic view of things and accepts that our native languages are so different – each with its own names for illnesses, plants, fungi and so forth – so the only way to avoid confusion is to use an agreed common language like Latin. The two dispensations only collide when the teaching of Latin is withheld from large numbers of people and then the whole thing becomes a grisly class issue. I never learned Latin at school and so the pronunciation of these unfamiliar words often feels like walking across a minefield.
This rather lovely fungus perfectly displays both sides of the argument. After a bit of toing and froing on the British Mycological Society Facebook page, which I thoroughly recommend, someone came up with a name that fitted the description in the books. I now think it’s Volvopluteus gloiocephalus – the Stubble Rosegill. The English name perfectly describes where it most often grows, and the fact that as it ages the gills turn pink. Unfortunately it’s also known as the big sheath mushroom and the rose-gilled grisette none of which vernacular descriptions fit very well the one that I found in a forest ride which is in the photo. This one was very fresh and the gills were still white. The key feature in mine was the sticky, shiny brown cap.
The AI apps all gave up at first post and so I was stuck with “some kind of Amanita”. My helpful respondent gave me a Latin name which describes a member of the Pluteaceae (family) that has a notable volva (the kind of socket in the ground that it grows from) and a sticky cap. Frankly I think that in this instance the Latin name is a lot more useful and it would still mean the same across the world because this one isn’t rare, it grows pretty well everywhere.
I’d thoroughly recommend getting into something you’ve never done before because every day brings something new and exciting. The experts who’ve spent years studying fungi, for instance, have to go on for more years of Norman normals before finding something new and exciting. But when you’re a beginner you’ve got all those champagne years still to come, and the ordinary, once you’ve started searching, are just as exciting and rewarding as the rarities. Not only that but you’ll never look at the vaulted roof of a gothic cathedral in the same light again once you look closely at some fungi. But quite apart from all that, these life-forms are just so beautiful and strange they fill a gloomy time of the year with ghostly luminosity.
