The Monthly Mushroom : Happy New Ear! (Auricularia auricula-judae)
by Jasper Sharp, 5 January, 2018, 1 comments
One can only imagine what our ancient forebears must have thought when they first came across the fleshy, shell-like flaps of Auricularia auricula-judae protruding grotesquely from forest branches. We do know, however, that by the time of Francis Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum, or a Naturall Historie in Ten Centuries (1627), this gelatinous fungal specimen had already acquired its own name and mythology. He described it as “an excrescence, called jew’s-ear, that groweth upon the roots, and the lower parts of the bodies of trees, especially of Elder and Ashes. It hath a strange propertie: for in warm weather it swelleth and openeth extremely. It is not green, but of a duskie brown colour.” Read more...
