Fascinating Fungi

It’s not really the time of year for fungi here in Europe, but we’ve just come back from Spain, and more importantly France, where at the right time of year, fungus-foraging is by way of being a national obsession. Find a secret cache in the woodlands, and no right thinking Frenchman will share its location with anyone: not brother, cousin, or best friend. An elderly man who lived up the road from us, back when we lived in the Ariège, took the knowledge of where his secret foraging-place was to his grave.

I too forage, as I was brought up doing. One of my earliest memories is of being got up by my mother at perhaps 5’clock to go to the local American airfield, disused since the war, to harvest field mushrooms and puffballs. I still forage – but very carefully. I’m sure only of field mushrooms and the unmistakeable puffball, as well as shaggy inkcaps and chanterelles.

Today though, for Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #8: Fascinating Fungi, I’m sharing pictures of the definitely inedible. Here are bracket fungi, and others that thrive on tree trunks and fallen timbers. I’m ashamed to say I don’t know the names of a single one: can anyone help? But there are no mushrooms-on-toast opportunities here!

Author: margaret21

I'm retired and living in North Yorkshire, where I walk as often as I can, write, volunteer, and travel as often as I can.

46 thoughts on “Fascinating Fungi”

  6. So pleased you are back safely in Yorkshire after your travels. Hope you had a wonderful stay with your family. The weather looked fine, sunny, but not too hot perhaps?? Fungi looking as if they are thriving in up your way. My father taught my sister and I to hunt down field mushrooms, but that was the limit of our foraging.

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    1. We had excellent weather – nicely warm, not too hot. All in all, a great break with lost of new experiences which may or may not make this blog. Yup, stick to field mushrooms!

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  13. I used to be able to identify so many edible fruits of the field but am hopeless now. I particularly enjoyed pignuts and would feast on them as a child, together with hawthorn leaves and flowers.

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  15. I lack the confidence to forage for fungus. I really don’t want to poison myself. I will however always go brambling in late Summer, that seems safe enough to me.

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    1. I can see why you don’t like puffballs. They do go on a bit, being so huge! I bet your fungi are often quite different from ours, even though you have the big fellahs too.

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  17. Pingback: Your Fascinating Fungi photos – Denzil Nature

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