I had a list of a few deep and meaningful topics I might blog about this week, when a trip to the woods led to a mushroom fascination that has gripped me so magnificently I had to write about it!  (Sorry if you wanted deep and meaningful, but you’re getting mushrooms).

The mushrooms may have always been there, but in true human-centric fashion I’ve never noticed them much before; too busy chatting with a friend, stuck in my head or just completely oblivious. But the meditating me of the past couple of years notices more things, and this week I’ve been noticing mushrooms.

Mushrooms of all sorts of colours, shapes and sizes; some so beautiful a fairy would set up home in them, others so odd looking they must feature in a witch’s grimoire.

I stopped to take photos of them, marvelling at the contrast of their bold or earthy tones against the backdrop of forest foliage.  I also had no bloody clue what they were.  Which ones were edible?  Which ones would kill me if I took a lick?  I decided to investigate, and fell down a mushroom rabbit hole from which I’ve only just surfaced (do mushrooms grow in rabbit holes?)

This beautiful cluster was the first to catch my eye. Psathyrella multipedata, commonly known as the clustered brittlestem. I think the general feeling on these ones is you could eat them, but you probably wouldn’t want to, a google search described them as ‘edible but not worthwhile.’ Not something you’d want to see that in a foodie critics review of your signature dish.

Below is a Clitocybe fragrans, a mushroom with an amazing aniseed scent that I unfortunately didn’t get a whiff of, but maybe just as well as this mushroom is apparently very toxic. Not one for the dinner menu then.

Below is the iconic mushroom from your standard book of fairytales; the one we love to see embroidered on cushions or painted on canvases: amanita muscaria, or the fly agaric. It often forms a symbiotic association with birch and other trees, passing nutrients between each other. According to the Woodland Trust website, the fly agaric has a long history of use in religious ceremonies, being used for over 4000 years in a sacred hallucinogenic drink called soma in India and Iran. So that’s where Aldous Huxley got the name for the drug the state used to control the population in his book Brave New World, love a bit of multi-faceted learning! It was once used as an insecticide and can cause death in rare cases, but more commonly nausea, vomiting and hallucinations. Alice eats some fly agaric in Wonderland, which explains a lot.

Now these mushrooms have foiled my investigative efforts as I’m still not sure what they are. On first google they look like a puffball (which are edible when young), but they could also be a common earthball which are most definitely not edible unless you want to get very, very ill.

Or they could even by a stinkhorn egg! Some of them did seem to have a yellow goo coming out of them, which suggests this could be the case. The stinkhorn egg breaks apart, oozing goo and an interesting (to put it politely) smell and then proceeds to grow until it looks like the image below.

Easy to see where it gets its proper name of Phallus impudicus.   Apparently you’d only want to eat it at the egg stage, the smell when in its full phallic glory is a bit much.

Not being certain what kind of mushroom this is makes it clear that if I were ever to venture into foraging it would have to be with the aid of someone much more knowledgeable about mushrooms.  But I can name at least two mushrooms now with some convincing authority (I think), and that, my friends, is progress!

I’m going to leave you with some mushroom jokes.

Q. Why was the mushroom arrested?

A. Stalking

Q. Did you hear the joke about fungus?

A. You won’t like it at first, but it’ll grow on you

Q. Why was the mushroom farmer a good person?

A. He had great morels

Q. What do mushrooms eat around the campfire?

A. S’pores

Q. Why did the mushroom retire?

A. She was too mold

And now I think it’s time I retire, before you get spored of my mushroom puns.

It’s been a pleasure, I’ll leave you with this golden nugget of wisdom:

If you don’t know what it is or where it came from, don’t put it in your mouth. 

Also, don’t trust my identification of mushrooms, in case I wasn’t clear, I’m not mush of an expert, I’m just trying to have some fun, guys.

Got any good jokes? I don’t, help me out.