Fungi - the good, the bad and the ugly

One of the results of being out in the countryside every day, walking the dog, is that I notice small changes. In fact, noticing small changes is a way to keep the walks alive. And having a camera handy is a way to keep myself noticing.

And one of the things I notice at this time of year is fungi. So here is a selection of my photos of fungi taken at this time of year over the past few years.

This clump appears every year in the garden in the same place at roughly the same time. I've no idea what it is but it's slightly sticky and not terribly appealing. Here it is a couple of days ago.

 

 

And here it is seven years ago, with Ellie as a puppy (pretending to be angelic).

Like most English people, and in spite of this lovely 1943 ‘King Penguin’ discovered for me by Pat, the partner of my sister A and an expert on secondhand books, I’m nervous about eating wild mushrooms.

The book has beautiful colour plates, which seem extravagant for wartime. I wonder if it was brought out as a result of food shortages in order to encourage people to forage in the wild.

Two of the book's colour plates: fairy ring champignon (left) and shaggy ink cap

The parasol mushroom (my photos again from now on) is eatable apparently - but please don't use this blog for identification - and very handsome. It often appears singly in the hedgerow . . .

. . . or en masse in fields.

The fly agaric (below) has long been associated with fairy story. It is said that if you eat it you will see the Little People, and another of my reference books says, rather sniffily, that it ‘has been used as an intoxicant by a few primitive tribes of Eastern Siberia’, by which I presume it means as part of shamanism. But please, children, do not try this at home, as the fungus is poisonous and dosage is crucial.

The same book says that the fungus favours birch and pine woods, being I suppose a more northerly species, but I found these examples near home underneath four small silver birches on the edge of a tiny stand of beech trees between two fields. Which gives me enormous hope: given only the slimmest of chances, nature does regenerate.

I do have more pictures of fungi but I haven’t yet found them. I really must list (not to say index) the multitude of pictures stored on my computer.