Fungi Friday 🍄

Happy Fungi Friday! 🍄

In early October I was in Kent near Cranbrook and decided to drop in on a Forestry Commission site I’d never visited before: Hemsted Forest.

Before I go any further, here’s a link to their fungi code which relates to foraging. I was here to take photographs and not to pick mushrooms.

I drafted some long blog about foraging but I realised I find the politics around it quite exhausting and distracting.

I sympathise with land managers due to my experience as a woodland specialist, but also understand that if people are not given correct information, they could fall foul of laws they never knew existed.

I think landowners have a responsibility here, but that we as individuals need to accept that the outdoors is not a finite resource for us to plunder. Also woodlands are extremely sensitive and our footsteps have an impact.

When I arrived at Hemsted Forest I overheard a woman and her two children discussing if I was their foray leader. Soon enough a man with a trug swinging from his arm arrived and off they went.

I turned off into the undergrowth at the sight of a dog barking at this crop of fly agaric.

As I stood looking at the fly agarics, the foray arrived behind me. As I stepped away so they could see for themselves, I made sure to say, “don’t eat those ones!”. “No,” the foray leader said, “definitely not”.

Thankfully I saw much more photogenic fly agarics when I stepped onto some of the rides away from the main trackway.

In among beech woodland I found some amethyst deceivers:

On a broken stump I found these stump brittlestems:

And these are likely to be sheathed woodtuft:

Sulphur tuft is unlikely to be foraged because it’s toxic, and its lone presence probably suggests knowledgeable foragers are visiting. This was common while other species were absent:

My very minimal (lazy) camera setup:

Thanks for reading.