| Foraging for Fungi |
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If you are looking for the Heath to supply you with regular basketfuls of truffles and other wild mushrooms, a la Carluccios, think again! Andy Overall, who led the Heath & Hampstead Society’s Autumn 2009 fungi walk on 19 September has found and identified nearly 500 different species of fungi on the Heath (about one sixth of the total number of species in the UK) , but only around 1% are edible. Of the rest, the vast majority not poisonous, but simply not worth the effort, while a small minority (including a beautiful “Disney-like” Fly Agaric that Andy found and brought along with him to introduce the topic), are pretty poisonous. One of the most fascinating general lessons from Andy’s walk was the close associations between specific fungi and different species of trees: find Birches, and you will probably find Birch Polypores, a bracket fungus that can be used to sharpen a razor or applied to a wound as a poultice. Lime trees are another good species for fungi, as are Elms and Poplars, this last providing us with another huge bracket fungus (Oxyporous Populus, I believe), another species far better seen than cooked. You don’t need to be a Latin expert to start to appreciate fungi: I came away from the walk with a wonderful list of names for the species that we found: Smoky Brackets, Shaggy Ink Caps, Velvet Shanks, Earthballs, Blushing Brackets and Clubfoot Fungus. However, for the Classical scholar, my favourite is Mycena Haemotosis, which actually “bleeds” a reddish milk from the base of its stem. Andy’s walk was a great way to start understanding fungi, and where to look for them on the Heath. For anyone that is more interested in the eating side of it all, he usually hosts a fungi breakfast at the Magdala pub, generally in November, which would definitely carry the acquisition of knowledge of these fascinating species up another notch. |