Hi this is Ali again, the aspiring mushroom detective.
I’ve haven’t written for a while, but what can I say… I’ve been so busy crawling through grass.
Its been the most amazing mushroom season ever. (for me that is) I’ve never seen so many weird and wonderful lifeforms.
Fungi are weird! They’re the largest, fastest, oldest living organisms in the world. They can smell of rotting flesh (never again will I collect a stinkhorn) or ‘odor de patisserie’, radish, mouldy cabbages or honey to name but a few. They can look like jelly brains (as I showed to thousands of kids which came to last weekends live and deadly show in Aberdeen), or delicate mushroom bonnets, crusts, warty lumps, cups, parasols, shell shapes on trees and on and on. In shades from bright red and purple to muddy green, pure white or even blue.
They’re amazing!!
I’ve spent much of September visiting different NTS properties and surveying for grassland fungi. The highlight for me was a week on the Isle of Canna, a small island off the west coast of scotland. Its only just over 5 miles long and has 15 human inhabitants, lots of sheep, rabbits and highland coo’s and an incredible wild bird population. Very very very beautiful!
Canna also has lots of grass in which CHEG’S like to grow. CHEG’s are the four groups of grassland mushroom I’m studying; Clavaria (coral fungi), Hygrocybe (waxcaps), Entolomas (pinkgills) and geoglossacea (earth tongues). So I was kept very busy recording and trying to identify them. Some are not easy, and now I have a box of dried unidentified wrinkly things and hopefully decent notes to look forward to this winter.
But, for now I’m quite happy exploring, collecting and puzzling over.
Ali