And notwithstanding appearances I’m not saying them here either. What I am doing is attempting to photograph a very small fungus while holding a six inch ruler behind it. In plants and fungus spotting size really does matter. Here’s what I was trying to get a picture of – it’s a tiny clump of candlesnuff fungus on some dead wood up on the Mendip hills.
Two things coincided which I wanted to write something about; the first was a random comment by a young man a couple of weeks ago which rang some serious warning bells in my mind. The second reason was our first fungus hunting visit to Priddy this late autumn. As to the first challenge I should say at the start that although I’ve never consumed any kind of hallucinogenic substance I am very interested in such properties and I’m filled with wonder at the way plants and fungi can synthesize unimaginably complex molecules which have the effect of reversibly changing our brains. Anyway I was having a conversation about Psilocybin with this young man and he mentioned that Velvet Bottom was a good place to gather them. Now I know Velvet Bottom well; it’s one of my favourite places on Mendip – however I wouldn’t eat anything foraged from there because the whole site is heavily polluted with lead, zinc and even cadmium to the extent that in some patches of ground nothing will grow except a few heavy metal tolerant plant specialists. Grazing by sheep is only allowed for very short periods to maintain the habitat, and downstream in Shipham gardening has, at times, become severely restricted due to fears of cadmium poisoning. I’m sure that readers of the Potwell Inn would never dream of boiling up magic mushrooms or, for that matter Fly agarics to make tea but just in case any readers were planning post retirement breakouts, I’d advise that there are safer places than Velvet Bottom to begin a life of crime.
But I also wanted to write about the metaphorically fatal attractions of fungi which can get very obsessive. I’m just grateful it’s a relatively short season. Fungi are beautiful, strange, mysterious and fleeting visitors which spend most of their time invisible and underground. What we see are the fruiting bodies; the spore carrying parts which can carry their offspring many miles. To be fair, fungi can be very hard to identify and although there are now one or two phone apps that will have a go, they’re still nowhere near safe enough to pronounce any fungus edible. I was testing one new app while we were out and although it easily managed some simple tasks, it failed completely on quite a number. I got many warnings that such-and-so was potentially dangerous. I don’t forage theses days in any case but I have poisoned our cat – which luckily recovered, and come within a whisker of poisoning Madame and me. Even easily recognised and safe fungi – St George’s mushroom for instance has built up intolerance over any years with some real experts, and suddenly made them ill.
But there’s more than enough aesthetic and scientific interest in fungi to compensate for leaving them in the ground. I’ll just put a few pictures up below to show the huge variety of form, texture and colour that they can display – not to mention odour which can range across the whole spectrum from apricot to dead sheep. I love them, and look forward to meeting them again every autumn and then there are always lichens, mosses and liverworts to fill the dark days of winter with fascination. My suggestion would be to photograph anything you encounter that interests you and make a note of the location – you can usually do this on your phone. Then perhaps one day you’ll feel inclined to identify and organise them in a spreadsheet and make a contribution to proper science in this time of global species extinction and climate change. All these below were photographed in a short walk last Thursday.
On Saturday I mended the allotment shed window which had been smashed months ago by vandals. I thing by comparison with the fungi my handiwork lacks a certain architectural je ne sais quois !
