If you do one thing this month - Hunt Fungi.

If you do one thing this month, hunt fungi. 

People are saying it’s a bumper season for mushrooms across the woods, fields and hills of Britain. Nature lovers get excited this time of year by the huge diversity of the fungal flush. Fungi are neither plants nor animals, they do not photosynthesise but require food to eat. There are over 15000 species in the UK, so don’t feel ashamed of failing to recognise them. The mushroom we see is the fruiting body of a network of mycelium which grows in the earth or in the decaying wood of the tree. This mycelium can be massive, small mushrooms being part of giant networks. We are only just beginning to understand how the mycelia network functions: it is frequently very closely associated with tree roots and carries information and nutrients between trees! Mushrooms are nutritious or deadly poisonous, have valuable medicines or psychoactive properties. The folklore surrounding them is extensive, and certain types highly sought after. Some truffles are sold for £3000 a kilo. You’re unlikely to find these on a forage unless you’ve spent years training your pigs but there’s other excitement to be had. 

If you want to try eating foraged mushrooms, make sure you are 100% certain of your identification. The best way of being certain is by going out with very experienced foragers. There are often local nature groups who can help with this. If you are going to identify yourself, then make sure you cross check against two or three good books. One of these should be Roger Phillips’ Mushrooms. It is a good idea to learn edible mushrooms one at a time and to choose species which are very difficult to confuse. Parasols and shaggy ink caps are both very tasty and easy to identify. Start with a few and ask experienced foragers to help you extend your list. 

Identification is fun whether you’re going to eat them or not and positively naming your first deathcap is as exciting as a penny bun. Look at how the stalk comes out of the ground, does it have an egg-like volva? Is there a ring around the stalk? What do the gills  look like and how are they attached to the stalk and to the margin of the cap? What does it smell like and is it growing under birches, or pines? You can cut through it with a knife and look for changing colour. All these things will help you identify and experience will increase your confidence. No mushroom is poisonous unless you eat it and you won’t harm the fungus by picking the mushroom ( anymore than you’d harm the brambles by picking blackberries). 

If you place the cap on paper for a couple of hours, it’ll drop spores. This can make great patterns which can be fixed using hair spray and might be useful in identifying the species. 

The boom time for mushrooms is now in the UK, make sure you enjoy it and spend the winter, spring and summer anticipating their return.