Fungi Friday 🍄

Happy Fungi Friday! 🍄

I was in London in early October visiting my old Lewisham haunts. Walking past some horse chestnut trees that I used to wait for the bus under as a teenager, I spotted some shrooms.

Those honey-coloured caps suggested a couple of things.

Firstly that they were honey fungus (Armillaria mellea), one of the most feared fungi in the UK in economic and horticultural terms. But that’s another essay.

Secondly, if it was honey fungus the tree would likely be for the chop. Honey fungus on a tree of this size and already in decline, along a highway in London above a bus stop – that’s a problem for the council.

Haters of honey fungus will be buoyed by this image, showing a very healthy community of honey fungus around a stump. This was about one minute away.

Here you can see the mushrooms have rings, so they’re not Armillaria tabescens, which you may also find around trees and panic about.

They are rather gorgeous.

This is considered edible though is known to cause stomach upsets in some people. I know that people in Slavic countries use this species for culinary purposes. Sometimes you just have to look at hauls of mushrooms on Instagram for evidence of that.

Thanks for reading.

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