Skip to main content

A beautiful discovery

Fungi have - completely unintentionally - become my hobby.
Last summer, whilst on holiday in the Brecon Beacons, I stumbled across a flowchart for identifying mushrooms in a local shop. Intrigued, I bought it, and it sat on a desk in my house for several months. When I found it again in September, I decided to go for a walk in Bute Park to see if I could find any mushrooms, and something irreversible sparked within me. Since then, I have become somewhat of a 'mushroom enthusiast', and it seems there's no turning back.
Generally speaking, I'm not very good at keeping up hobbies. I will usually do something for a couple of months and get bored, before moving onto the next thing. It's for this reason, that when it was first suggested to me to document my fungal discoveries I decided against it, thinking it was another one of my passing phases. However, five months in, I think it's safe to say I'm hooked and this is not as temporary as my emo phase once was.
Fungi are, in my humble opinion, absolutely fascinating. In school we are taught about plants and animals, but this huge kingdom of organisms is often overlooked. Even in A-Level biology, we spent only one lesson learning about fungi, and it was on yeast specifically. The field of mycology isn't an option of study until post-graduate level. I think this is a massive oversight, as fungi are essential to our planet and above all, they're really, really cool.
I won't bore with the scientific details, as although it's important and equally interesting for those of us with a curious nature, it's not the best thing about fungi. The best thing about fungi is how they look. I don't go for walks to discover whether or not mushrooms are edible (in fact, I'm not a huge fan of the taste), but rather to admire how incredible they look.
Of course, when we think of a mushroom we might think of the button mushroom we put in dishes or the fly agaric that's depicted in fairytales, but there are so many different varieties that you might not even recognise that what you're looking at is a fungus. They come in all shapes, sizes and colours. Some look like coral, others are cup shaped. There are bright yellow, orange and blue mushrooms. Some grow as giant shelves on trees and some are so small you'd only notice them because they grow in massive clusters. The world of fungi is infinite and absolutely fascinating. It is a subject that can never grow tiresome or boring, because there's always another species to discover and more to learn.
And I hope you will enjoy joining me on this journey as I expand my knowledge on these incredible organisms.
Searching for mushrooms in Pontneddfechan. Picture by Matthew Leatherbarrow.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Milky Conecap - Conocybe apala

Often, I will find a mushroom and never be able to work out what it is. I will spend days searching the internet and looking in books, but never able to solve the mystery. It can be really frustrating. This happened to me at the beginning of May, when I was walking home from an appointment and saw a white mushroom poking out of the grass nearby. It was the first time I'd seen a mushroom in over a month, so I was pretty excited about it. I did what I usually do: took pictures, examined it, made notes. Then I went home to do some research, and couldn't find anything. So I forgot about it. Yesterday, whilst I was doing research for another mushroom, I accidentally clicked on a wrong link and ended up on a page describing the Milky Conecap , or Conocybe apala.  I had an "aha!" moment, as I recognised instantly that it was the same mushroom I had spent so long trying to find a name for. Let me tell you, there's nothing more satisfying than putting the final pieces
1 comment
Read more

Dung Roundhead - Stropharia semiglobata

The start of mushroom season is finally upon us, and I couldn't be more excited. Although the bouts of rain weren't ideal for our wedding last week, they did mean lots of exciting finds during our honeymoon, walking through damp North Wales. I will no doubt make many posts about the intriguing finds we stumbled across during our time away, but I wanted to start at our first fungal encounter, the Dung Roundhead , or Stropharia semiglobata. Scattered across the huge pastures we were walking through were hundreds of them. And though the name suggests they grow exclusively on dung, the majority of them were in fact beside dung. The gills are adnate and ranged in colour depending on the age of the mushroom. Younger ones had a more purplish tinge to them, while the more mature species had black gills. The spore print is a dark purplish-brown colour. Characteristics Habitat:  On or beside dung, usually in pasture. Cap:  1-3cm across, hemispherical. Cream to ye
4 comments
Read more

Pale Brittlestem - Psathyrella candolleana

Going for a walk on a weekday is really rather peaceful, as everyone is at work. It can feel like you have a whole section of the world to yourself, like your own little secret. That's how I felt today walking down the Rhymney Trail . There were loads of birds and dragonflies about, but other than that, I was pretty much by myself. It wasn't until I was on my way back that I found any mushrooms. I came slightly off the path to look at a pile of fallen trees and, just as I was about to give up, I spotted a cluster of mushrooms, nearing the end of their life. It's been really dry the last couple of days, so it's likely they ran out of moisture. When I looked to the floor next to me, I saw some more poking out of the ground. They looked similar to a cluster I'd found in March, which I'd only recently identified. I went home to make a spore print and look at my old pictures, and concluded that these elderly fungi were Pale Brittlestems , or Psa
Post a Comment
Read more