Common puffball (Lycoperdon perlatum)
Other names: gem-studded puffball, warted puffball, devil’s snuff-box, wolf farts
When to see: July – November
mushrooms
Black Bulgar
Black bulgar (Bulgaria inquinans)
Other names: black jelly drops
When to see: October-March (but can be found all year round)
A small, leathery cup-fungus commonly found in clusters on fallen branches/dead trees – particularly oak and beech. Some say they look like liquorice drops (1) or Pontefract cakes (2).
Trooping Funnel
Trooping Funnel (Infundibulicybe geotropa)
Other names: monk’s head; giant funnel, rickstone funnel cap
When to see: September-December
This common mushroom, with a typical mushroom smell, is found in mixed woodland, often in clearings. They are often found standing in ‘troops’ (straight lines/ranks or arcs) or in rings.
Porcelain Fungus
Porcelain fungus (Oudemansiella mucida)
Other names: slimy beech tuft, poached egg fungus
When to see: July-October
These delicate, semi-translucent white-ivory mushrooms are typically found on beech wood: dead trunks, fallen branches or dead branches on living beech trees. They are, therefore, saprophytes, i.e., obtaining their nourishment from dead or decaying organic matter.
The Smallest Room
A very old joke…
– What’s the smallest room in the world?
– A mushroom!
But what is a mushroom?
Mushrooms are neither plants (kingdom Plantae) nor animals (kingdom Animalia). They are fungi. What we typically recognise as a mushroom is the fruiting body of certain types of fungus. Mushrooms “live on land, in the water, in the air, and even in and on plants and animals. They vary widely in size and form, from the microscopically small to the largest organisms on Earth (at several square miles large)” (Keating, 2017). However, we commonly recognise them when they form above ground (e.g., on soil, in leaf litter, within blankets of moss) or on their food source (e.g., fallen tree branches, trunks of living trees).
Mushrooms in the Valley
WARNING: Unless you are 100% confident that you know what you are doing, NEVER EAT mushrooms – many are poisonous or, if not poisonous, can cause severe upset stomachs, etc. Look but don’t eat!
Animal, vegetable or mineral?
You’ve probably played it before. It’s often along the lines of ’20 Questions’, in which someone thinks of an item, an object, a person, and so on. Others then have 20 attempts to ask questions in order to determine the chosen thing – but they can only ask questions that can be answered with either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. To narrow it down, early on someone will typically ask one of the three major category questions: ‘Is it an animal?’, ‘Is it a vegetable?’, ‘Is it a mineral?’ This seems to cover all the bases with regard to how we conceive of the world/universe – everything’s either an animal, a vegetable (presumably meaning a plant) or a mineral. This is fine for a parlour game but is everything actually an animal, a mineral or a plant?
Forest Fungi
Or…mushrooms in the crooked wood
Feels, like a good Halloween one this – finding mushrooms in the deep, dark woods.
