Friday 27 September 2013

Funny old fungus

parasol gone over

It's not been a very good year for finding fungi of any sort this year, too dry, too hot so despite our excellent find of Chicken of the Woods at the beginning of July which was complemented by a nice harvest of Oyster mushrooms which have been cropping reliably in a particular place for several years now we've had no ceps, no chanterelles, no sheeps feet and no parasols.

Except we have, I've just been looking in the wrong place this time. Usually we find the different varieties around the forest in same sort of area each year and since we had a little rain a week or so ago I've been assiduously checking to see if our favourite patches are producing at all. Not a sausage, but the parasol mushroom above and his friends, all dessicated and gone over in the sunshine of the last few days were growing in a place we'd only just cleared of brambles and bracken. The ground was apparently barren and dry and it was the last place I would have looked but walking the cats this evening there they were.

And another example of the fickleness of our fungal friends - we have never had a harvest of field mushrooms here all the time we've had the place but this year I've found three individual mushrooms, all alone in three widely spaced places at about a week apart for each. It's rather disconcerting and not enough to do anything with but it just shows how unpredictable mushroom hunting can be.

field mushroom

1 comment:

Jac Wright said...

Saw your lovely blog. Just thought I should say "Happy birthday" and hope you will be able to get out of debt this year. :^)

- Stranger passing by