Fungus Forage at IVCP

Itchen Valley Country Park held a Fungus Foraging event this week. I saw the advertisement for the event at about the same time as I saw this news story and thought I would go along to make sure I knew what I was eating.

The forage was led by John Wright, who is an expert on all things mycological. Anyone who watched the original series of River Cottage may remember him from that. He was very interesting and entertaining, and gave a lot of insights into the recognition of different fungi, and their life patterns. There are over 15,000 different species of fungi in the UK – that compares to about 3,500 plants.

In order to properly identify a fungus, you need to carefully dig it up. There are many fungi that look similar above the soil, but have distinctive character tics below the soil. Even that may not be enough, and you may need to take it home overnight to study the spore pattern that emerges (though not, John suggested, on your best table linen). There’s one fungus that shoots its spores out at several thousand times the force of gravity (I forget whether it was 3,000 or 30,0000).

Despite the less-than-ideal conditions (weather has been too dry), we found sixteen different species – John had promised us fifteen. I’d never really appreciated how much there was to be found on the woodland floor, and will keep my eyes open on future walks.

Some of our finds set out on a table, ready for identification

A “mushroom”, I leaned, is a generic name for an edible fungus. A “toadstool” is a generic name for a non-edible one. That suggests thtat the headline of the BBC article, above, is inaccurate. And as far as edibility goes, fungus can be broadly grouped into one of four types:

Those that will kill you
Those that won’t kill you, but will make you feel so ill you wish they did
Those that are edible, but taste disgusting
Those that are good to eat

The surest way of finding the fourth type is to forage at the greengrocer rather than the forest!

Here are some photos of some of our foraging finds, with some notes of what I can remember about them. Note that the identification is “forage identification” – i.e. an initial assessment of what the specimen is most likely to be. John explained that in order to make a formal record, a much more detailed inspection would be required.