Now is the moment to retrieve the basket from the basement. An old-fashioned basket is just the job, put together from interwoven laths of willow; it has seen years of service. Nowadays, I often lead small parties dedicated to the scientific sampling of British fungi. We call them fungus ‘forays’. ‘Foraging’ is something else. Everything foraged is grist to the saucepan, but a foray will bring home all manner of fungal oddities that might break your teeth or send you mad if you included them in a risotto. The fungus enthusiast will not reject a tiny mushroom growing from an acorn cupule, nor yet discard a black jelly hanging sinisterly from a branch or an orange patch on rotten timber. That is not to say that the pleasures of eating mushrooms are lost on forayers. It is rather that the edible varieties are a fringe benefit. The Kingdom of Fungi is the main event.
When conditions are just right there is nothing more pleasing than walking out on a sunny October day into woodland that you know will be teeming with mushrooms. There are occasions when mushrooms are so abundant it is hardly possible to avoid crushing them underfoot. Nor are any two years identical, especially given the British climate, so every year will produce something that you have never seen before. The only problem with mushrooms is that all the species tend to arrive at once: the better the foray the slower the progress. I know of one forayer who never got beyond the car park. If it is done properly, forayers slowly amble along turning over rotting logs and picking up and examining every small mushroom with a hand lens. It is not aerobic exercise. Oblique shafts of light illuminate the forest floor when the sun gets lower, painting up the glowing caps of red brittlegills, or shining on the glutinous white fruitings of porcelain fungus lined up along old beech logs. Meanwhile, a real specialist might only gather small spots discolouring the leaves of brambles or woodland grasses. When something unusual is discovered a cry goes up and everyone gathers round to admire the find. Names – often scientific names – are bandied about with aplomb. It could be the first time Rubroboletus satanus (Satan’s bolete) has been seen here for twenty years! Its fat red stem and contrasting white cap pinpoint it at once. Some fungi are collected carefully and put into small jars or compartmentalised boxes to be taken home for examination under a microscope, which is the only way they can be accurately identified. Like the hunt for a superior trilobite in a fossil-rich quarry it is all about the thrill of the chase, except that ‘chase’ is about the least appropriate word for a rapt traipse through a wood molto lento. Nonetheless, there is an element of competitiveness as to who discovers the most beautiful, or recherché, or outstandingly delicious find of the day. Enthusiasm is undiminished as the light begins to fade: a fanatical friend continued to foray by the light of his car headlamps when he was convinced that a really uncommon species had to be out there. It often comes as a surprise to first-timers that there are so many different species of fungi. A good foray in the New Forest easily succeeds in finding more than 150 different species. A largely different set of species – but just as many – would be recovered from a foray in the Highlands of Scotland. Naturalists who devote their lives to birds or orchids, and know every species as well as they know their own family, often pass over the whole Kingdom of Fungi as too prolific, too unpredictable; just too difficult altogether.
My old woven basket, used for collecting fungi.
I cannot pin down my fungal epiphany. I am sure it was after the bird’s egg phase, and I am quite convinced that it ran concurrently with the chemi-shed. This young naturalist and scientist found everything worth attention; rather than analyse a part of nature, I sought to learn it all. This was not a conscious ambition – it was rather an instinct that could not be denied. It is as if I were no more than a pair of perceptive, but disembodied eyes observing everything – not unfocused, but voracious. Art and architecture, books and birds, fossils and fungi, were part of a portfolio that knew no limits. Charles Darwin’s Autobiography reveals that he, too, was restlessly hungry to know about everything. He started on beetles. He became a geologist: on the Beagle voyage he made fundamental observations on the geological history of South America, and the origin of oceanic atolls. His visit to the Galapagos Islands – the finches and giant tortoises he discovered there – fuelled the theory of the origin of species by natural selection. He devoted several years to a study of barnacles. Orchids, primroses and worms were grist to his intelligence, and all yielded to his brilliance. My only resemblance to the great man is in the range of my early curiosity; I cannot make similar claims about its depth.
If I cannot exactly remember when I first became engrossed with mushrooms I can remember why. They seemed so extraordinarily alien. They appeared so rapidly, and disappeared again with equal dispatch. One day in late summer an old stump in the garden at Ainsdale Road was surrounded by a dozen or so brown mushrooms, with caps shaped like closed umbrellas. A day or two later some of the umbrellas had opened further out, but by the following day many of them had turned into a black mush, and it was not long before all evidence of the mysterious visitors had completely vanished. I wondered how they fed themselves and how they grew so fast. I thought that if they disappeared so quickly they must have achieved what they had set out to do, but I had no idea what that might be. A few weeks later they were back again, if not in such great numbers. My mother said they were nasty toadstools[1] and not to touch them, but it was too late. I had already picked one, which had fallen to pieces in my hand, revealing that the cap sheltered many thin dark parallel sheets underneath that I would soon learn to call gills (I was used to seeing fish gills, so I could see how this name came about). The toadstool had so little substance, yet I could see where bark had been levered away from the tree by the action of a single toadstool pushing through. I soon found other toadstools to compare with the first: small pale ones appeared in the grass in the lawn. When we were by the River Lambourn I discovered a huge, white puffball, larger than a loaf. It looked like a balloon that had somehow been exhaled from the ground among the nettles. It was a fungus – but was it a mushroom? It was so different from the ones around the stump it was hard to see how they could be the same kind of organism. Both mushroom and puffball were imbued with mystery, and all mysteries demand to be investigated.
A book was needed. As always during the 1950s the book was one of the Observer series. The Observer’s Book of Common Fungi by Elsie M. Wakefield was first published in 1954, which does place an approximate date on the awakening of my interest. It would be hard to overstate the importance of these little books to budding naturalists in the post-war years. They were compact, small enough to fit into a schoolboy’s pocket. They were generally written in a straightforward way by people who knew their stuff. They were well illustrated for the time, although by modern standards the pictures seem rather small. They crammed a lot of information into 200 or so pages. And the books were inexpensive. I had the butterfly volume, and the ones on freshwater fish, birds, and wildflowers, but for these there were other options. The mushroom volume was the only guide of its kind. There were specialised scientific monographs, to be sure, but these were out of reach to the lay reader. Elsie M. Wakefield was a pioneering woman scientist – a professional mycologist. The names I learned from Wakefield’s book have stuck obstinately in my memory and refuse to be displaced by those preferred by later classifications based on modern understanding. I still find myself blurting out ‘Hypholoma hydrophilum’ to a bewildered (and much younger) fellow forayer when confronting a dense mass of chocolate brown caps on a decaying log. ‘Do you mean Psathyrella piluliformis?’ comes a rather discombobulated reply. ‘The same thing!’ say I, confidently. It is just that it has changed its name, but not its identity since the days of the Observer’s Book, which is what often happens with scientific taxonomy. Somehow, calling this toadstool the ‘common stump brittlestem’ – a name invented for it recently to sidestep a supposedly popular aversion to scientific names – seems less satisfying than announcing the whole classical mouthful. The common mushrooms that made up most of the e
ntries in the Observer’s Book are still the ones that turn up regularly on forays, and include the best edibles as well as the most lethal. It provided a good grounding.
I did my own solitary forays thanks to London buses. Red double-decker buses served the city and its suburbs, as they still do today. Beyond that network green buses crossed from the outer suburbs into the countryside. You could get to most places around the perimeter of London by bus: smokers and people who liked to see where they were going went upstairs, and the latter included me. London Transport had a bargain ticket called a Green Rover that allowed you the freedom of the whole network, and the Young Traveller Green Rover was even better value. I must have been about thirteen when I took my basket to Ruislip Woods one autumn with my copy of Wakefield’s little book tucked into my pocket. Some of this ancient woodland has since been gobbled up by housing, but then it was an extensive tract of beech, oak and other broadleaved trees, with at least one conifer plantation. Paths led into deep rides, and even from the top of the bus I could see mushrooms dotting the roadside verges. I set off into the wood with my senses tingling, with the same nervous awareness that I felt when seeking subtle signs of hidden birds’ nests.
The first large fungus I gathered near a birch tree was one of the most poisonous and also one of the most iconic. The red-capped mushroom ‘with white spots’ appears on ceramics, Christmas cards, T-shirts and cakes. When a gnome needs a seat this mushroom provides it. When Wiffly-Piffly Bunny goes to visit his friend Mrs Mouse she lives in one of these mushrooms, with little windows opening up in the cap, like attic dormers. I suppose it is an icon of sorts, if only on account of its unmistakable signature. Its common name is fly agaric, and its scientific one Amanita muscaria, and for once the latter name has remained inviolate. Finding it was a wonderful moment for the young mycologist. It was difficult to believe that any natural colour could be so brilliant, as if some sprite of the woods had come in the night with a magic paint pot to colour it up. I checked with my little book to learn that the ‘spots’ can actually be wiped off the scarlet cap – they are removable scabs rather than part of the cap itself. They start as part of a white ‘bag’ that encases the whole toadstool, and as it grows to scarlet splendour the bag splits into fragments, a few of which remain to decorate the surface. I checked that there was a collar, or ring, on the stem, and that the gills were white. One example went into the basket.
Onwards, down the track to see pale brown, funnel-shaped mushrooms that when picked spilt white milky juice on my fingers. There were only a few mushrooms that had this property, and a search through the Observer’s Book found the name Lactarius, with a milky name to suit. From woody twigs arose little delicate bunches of mushrooms with conical caps, almost too fragile to pick. Their stems were no wider than a knitting needle: I took one home for a more leisurely examination. A log on its side seemed to erupt with stacks of tiny brackets, striped concentrically like decorated awnings. There were fungi everywhere! Under a beech tree, scarlet brittle gills (Russula) had caps almost as bright as the fly agaric’s, a troop of mushrooms crouched close to the ground like lurid cakes that had popped out of the soil. The one I examined had white gills, and had no ring on its stem, which was about the same size and colour as a stick of blackboard chalk, and snapped as suddenly when it was broken. A very pale yellowish fungus sprouted from the path side, which had a similar stature to the fly agaric, and seemed to show comparable features of the gills and stem. Another Amanita – the false death cap. It was supposed to smell like cut potatoes, and yes, that seemed to be the exact analogy. The next page in my book showed an illustration of the true death cap (Amanita phalloides), the most lethal toadstool known to man, its cap a sinister green colour. Elsie Wakefield said it was to be avoided at all costs. It must have an entry in The Guinness Book of Records. I found mushrooms with chocolate-brown gills and rust-coloured gills, and even one with deep pink gills. They must surely all be different species. My basket was getting full quite quickly, but there seemed no end to the variety. On the ground what looked like a mass of discarded orange peel proved to be yet another kind of fungus, but this one could never be called a toadstool. What name to give it? Then hidden in the beech litter a troop of something entirely black covered a yard or so of the forest floor. The fungi were dark and flaccid funnels a couple of inches high blanketing the ground. They were from another reality, and surely wore the livery of the Underworld, malevolent and unnatural, like an eldrich vegetable from an H. P. Lovecraft story (I had just learned that word ‘eldrich’). It was easy to find in the Observer’s Book, for nothing else resembled it: Craterellus cornucopioides. I thought a cornucopia was a horn bursting with good things, and ‘horn of plenty’ was one of the fungus’s common names, but I think I preferred the French ‘trompette de mort’ (trumpet of death) as more appropriate to its sombre colours and alien form. I had to take some of these fungi home to scare the family. To my surprise, they were described as ‘edible and good’ in the little book.
I doubt whether many parents would now allow a pubescent boy to foray alone through dense woods on the outskirts of London. It is the kind of place where madmen dig their shallow graves. It may be a site for clandestine appointments. It would be strangely appropriate if drugs were traded next to the trompettes de mort. My parents were not particularly lax. At least, I did get the advice never to talk to strangers. To those who had survived the Blitz I suspect all other dangers shrank in proportion. Let the children run free! I cannot remember being afraid of more than getting lost along the rides. I certainly was not afraid of the fungi, but others were. On my way home on the top of the bus an old gentleman wearing a flat cap eyed the basket on my lap. ‘Don’t touch any of them toadstools, son,’ he said in a serious voice, ‘or you’ll be going to an early grave.’ I looked at him with equal seriousness. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘this is Craterellus cornucopioides.’ I pointed at the red cap pointing out of the basket. ‘The poisonous one is the fly agaric.’ I doubt he believed me.
Once I was back in Ainsdale Road I spread out my finds and tried to identify the mushrooms that I had not had time to name in the woods. It was my first attempt to learn the cast of characters in a play that I had yet fully to understand. Fungi were neither animals nor plants, they were a kingdom all of their own. No wonder they exhibited so many colours and shapes. What I had collected were just the fruit bodies of the fungi, their means of reproduction when they shed their spores, which were far too small to see with the naked eye. I could imagine a brown smear from the gills of a dark mushroom must have been made of thousands of minute spores. I needed Mr Morley-Jones’s microscope to see them properly, as they measured just a few thousandths of a millimetre. Spores were like minute seeds that blew in the wind until they landed in exactly the right place to germinate. The business part of the fungus was a mass of white threads that sometimes adhered to the bottom of the stem – this was the spawn (mycelium) that spread through leaves and wood feeding on the substances that plants – real plants – had synthesised while they prospered in the sunlight. Fungi were recyclers, cleaners, or occasionally unwelcome guests. As I moved between the illustrations in the Observer’s Book I began to realise that I had collected some things that were not in the book. If they were the right colour the gills were attached in a different way, or the mushrooms bruised red when they were handled, of which there was no mention by the thorough Elsie M. Wakefield, or they gave off an exotic smell. There must be many more mushrooms out there to be identified. I realised I was just at the beginning of a long journey.
My mother left me alone to get on with it, because the television was showing the prime minister, Harold Macmillan, doing something important. Although she regarded herself as unconventional, my mother did like her politicians to be good-looking men with neat moustaches. Her liking for Sir Anthony Eden (Macmillan’s predecessor) was based almost entirely on his impeccable manners and his moustache. She preferred Tories, naturally, on account of their better grooming. Follo
wing her example, when I was very young I liked the look of Joseph Stalin, who not only had a good moustache but was kind to little children like myself. I could see him beaming at them on the television. I thought he would make a much better ‘uncle’ than Eddie and Arthur, serving in the shops in Fulham and Willesden. My mother failed to warm to Labour politicians, not, probably, because she differed strongly on principle, but because they were deficient in the manners and moustache department. When Michael Foot (Labour) appeared on the box or on the radio she would describe the politician acidly as a ‘whippersnapper’. My sister was also not enamoured with fungi at first, as her ponies and our beloved Shetland sheepdog Berry (successor to Sue the fox terrier) occupied much of her time. Much later Kath became rather skilled at finding ceps, king of the edible mushrooms, and a kind of unofficial competition has been running between us ever since. My father was away with rod and line.
What I loved about identifying mushrooms was the involvement of nearly all my senses: sight, smell, touch and taste. The first principles had been established by pioneering nineteenth-century scientists, before the microscope had become indispensable, so the young mycologist was treading in the same footsteps as his naturalist ancestors. Sight was involved, obviously, as I had to check not just the colour of the cap, but more importantly that of the gills, and stem. The gills were attached to the stem in various ways, sometimes running down it, or curving upwards, maybe not even reaching as far as the stem itself. Some mushrooms had a ‘ring’ on the stem – like the fly agaric – others did not. To find the colour of the spores meant taking a spore print – placing a cut cap gills down on a sheet of paper and covering it with a glass overnight to see what spore deposit had been thrown down by the morning. White was common, but I soon discovered various shades of brown, and pink, or purplish- to jet-black. Some mushrooms changed colour when the flesh was damaged. I soon learned to recognise the blusher (Amanita rubescens), a common relative of the fly agaric that flushed pink when its stem was rubbed. Other mushrooms bruised yellow or even black. Touch: some mushrooms felt silky smooth ‘like a kid glove’ (Clitopilus prunulus), others were subtly rough like shagreen. Taste was important: some fungi had no taste at all while others were distinctive. A taste resembling what E. M. Wakefield called ‘new meal’ was characteristic of some varieties, like the white St George’s mushroom, which separated it out from a number of similar-looking species by its overwhelming smell and taste of newly baked bread. Some of the brittlegills (Russula) were peppery to taste, or hot, or simply unpleasant. The rule was to nibble a little bit on the tip of the tongue and spit it out when the taste cut in. The latex that dripped from the milkcaps (Lactarius) when their gills were broken could be mild, or practically blow your head off. I used to place a drop on my little finger and test it on the tongue. Even this was sometimes an ordeal. I soon learned that superficially similar mushrooms could have dissimilar tastes. The mycological world was complex and I was finding my way through it by experiment, mushroom by mushroom. As for smell, it was the most difficult of all. Odour can only be described by reference to something else: smells like frying bacon, honey, or blue cheese. Only a few are beyond question. The sulphur knight (Tricholoma sulphureum) smells of coal tar – it is exactly like freshly laid tarmacadam. Everyone knows aniseed, and a few mushrooms exude a strong odour of ouzo. One of them is also helpfully green in colour (Clitocybe odora) – a gentle blue-green, and not the evil green of the death cap. The curious fragrance of freshly cut new potatoes may be subtler, but most people recognise it when it is pointed out, as I did in Ruislip Woods with the false death cap. The scent of radish is common enough in the fungal world, but some people think it is rather more like that of cucumber. Some Inocybe species are reputed to smell of sperm. I soon discovered two particularly charming examples. One was the aroma given off by a rather small whitish mushroom that grows in short grass (Hygrocybe russocoriacea). Elsie Wakefield said it smelled of Russian leather. What could that be like? I could scarcely go round a leather shop sniffing at articles on sale until I found the right one. Only when I finally, and independently identified the mushroom did I know what Russian leather actually smelled like. The mushroom helped me identify the smell rather than the other way round. I have never met a Russian wearing leather to confirm my diagnosis. My favourite aroma of all was a mushroom that was described as smelling of damp chicken feathers (Singerocybe phaeophthalma). I have never managed to verify this by catching a chicken and dousing it with water.
A Curious Boy Page 12
