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May’s Monthly Mushroom: Elder Whitewash (Hyphodontia sambuci) pt 1

May’s Monthly Mushroom: Elder Whitewash (Hyphodontia sambuci) pt 1

by Jasper Sharp, 13 May, 2019, 0 comments

They are among the first of our trees to burst into leaf, and any moment now they should be yielding up their perfumed blossoms for cordials, champagnes, fritters or whatever your fancy is. There are those, however, who believe our native Black Elder, Sambucus nigra, to be something of a mixed blessing, best confined to the hedgerow rather than the woodlands. Fast growing, spindly and brittle branched, they spring up in unsightly shrub-like tangles in those nitrogen-loaded hotspots left uncolonised by more majestic species. The featured image is the Elder Whitewash - a crust fungus regularly found on elder . As John Lewis-Stempel poetically writes in The Wood: The Life and Times of Cockshutt Wood (2018), Read more...
April’s Monthly Mushroom : Coral Slime (Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa)

April’s Monthly Mushroom : Coral Slime (Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa)

by Jasper Sharp, 4 April, 2019, 1 comments

These monthly posts have endeavoured, as much as possible, to focus on a particular mushroom, toadstool or other fungal organism of interest that might be in season around the time they appear online. This means we have now reached a potentially tricky time of year. “March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb”, as the saying goes. A few weeks ago, when it was still cold and wet, I had considered looking at a number of jelly fungi that I was still finding oozing from damp stumps and fallen trunks, or maybe one of the brackets still hanging on from Winter. Then after the incongruously meekly-named Storm Kevin brought a hail of dead twigs and branches down to ground level for closer inspection, I thought about zooming in to meditate more fully on some of the resupinate crust fungi that I found attached to them. Read more...
March’s Monthly Mushroom: Frosty Bonnet (Mycena tenerrima)

March’s Monthly Mushroom: Frosty Bonnet (Mycena tenerrima)

by Jasper Sharp, 15 March, 2019, 1 comments

There are not many signs of mushrooms about at the moment, as we transition to a time of emergent Spring greens and Monty Don back on telly. Resupinates  continue to flourish in the dank places beneath logs, while the remnants of certain brackets  persist on trunks and stumps. Nevertheless, aside from a few notable exceptions, like St. George’s Mushrooms or Morels, there won’t be many of the more obviously mushroom-shaped fungi around over the coming few months. Read more...
December’s Monthly Mushroom: Curry Milkcap (Lactarius camphoratus)

December’s Monthly Mushroom: Curry Milkcap (Lactarius camphoratus)

by Jasper Sharp, 7 December, 2018, 0 comments

We’re not far from the shortest day of the year now and the concurrent midwinter festive frolics that signal the arrival of Christmas. For the mushroom hunter, however, this brief period of peace and goodwill to all men also brings the slightly melancholic awareness that we are past the peak of the fungi season and it’s going to be comparatively slim pickings over the next eight or nine months.   Nevertheless, my own mycological meanderings received a bit of a boost recently with the discovery of a new site here in East Kent, a public park established on the site of the former Betteshanger colliery  situated midway between Sandwich and Deal.    This pioneering exercise in environmental sustainability makes for a great day out throughout the year no matter wherever your particular interest in the great outdoors might lie. Its 121 hectares are interwoven with cycle tracks to race around while affording some spectacular views of the surrounding area. Read more...
Sulphur tuft

Monthly Mushroom: Sulphur Tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare)

by Jasper Sharp, 3 October, 2018, 9 comments

Fifty shades of brown, these are the hues in which we tend to imagine our Autumns, but it struck me while wood-wandering one sunny day recently that we are still just within that transitional period of the year, around the equinox, when yellows and oranges stand out brighter than ever within the forest colour palette. As we ease into October, the woods are positively bursting with Ochre russulas (Russula ochroleuca), Honey fungus (Armillaria mellea) and Laughing Gyms (Gymnopilus junonius) and there is also still a good chance of crossing paths with the standout egg-yolk smears of Fuligo septica, or the Dog Vomit slime mould . Read more...
The Monthly Mushroom – The Shaggy Inkcap

The Monthly Mushroom – The Shaggy Inkcap

by Jasper Sharp, 1 October, 2017, 3 comments

As any seasoned mycologist will tell you, there’s much more to mushroom hunting than mere foraging. The sheer beauty of their manifold shapes, colours and patterning makes many specimens ideal photographic subjects. Then there is the joy of learning how fungi are situated within a broader ecosystem, with different specimens associated with different plants, trees and microhabitats. There is also the satisfaction of positive identification and the excitement that you may have stumbled across a rare specimen in a place they’ve not been spotted before, and of being an active member of a community contributing to this still obscure knowledge base (if you wish to get more involved in this aspect, the British Mycological Society have both a website and a lively Facebook discussion group (where people post their pics). Read more...
The Monthly Mushroom - Chicken of the Woods

The Monthly Mushroom – Chicken of the Woods

by Jasper Sharp, 7 September, 2017, 3 comments

It might not be much to look at, but Laetiporus sulphureus sure tastes good on a plate. A relatively common adornment to many a tree in Summer and early Autumn, the legendary Chicken of the Woods is one of the tastiest edible mushrooms found in the UK, and also one of the most highly prized: as the name suggests, it has the taste and texture of chicken, and its firm flesh makes an ideal substitute in stews, stroganoffs, curries, pilaffs and other meat dishes. Easily overlooked by those not in the know, it is instantly recognisable to the gourmet fungi forager, and bares little resemblance to other poultry-named fungi like the Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) or the Hen of the Woods (Grifola frondosa), the Japanese delicacy known as maitake. It is a bracket fungus that grows in large clusters of undulating fan-shaped shelves, the colour ranging from bright yellow to orange on its topside (hence the alternate common name Sulphur Shelf), with its yellowish underside pitted with pores from which it releases its spores and a firm white fleshy interior. Read more...
The National Trust, mushrooms and toadstools

The National Trust, mushrooms and toadstools

by Chris, 9 November, 2007, 21 comments

Mushrooms and toadstools are common at this time of year.  They are the visible evidence of fungi; the fruiting (spore-producing) bodies of fungi growing in the soil, leaf litter, or bark of trees. Nature’s ‘recycling depot’, bacteria and fungi are essential to the decomposition of plant and animal remains. Many local natural history societies organise fungal forays at this time of year, as do a number of the National Trust properties. Read more...

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