Back from Lake District

Disappoint

Wow, what a journey. Great for scenery, not so great for mushrooms. Yep. I went to Lake District in mushroom season, and all I brought back was a crappy photo of an earthball. No trophies, alas.

I did visit Armitt museum in Ambleside and its exhibition of Beatrix Potter's fungi watercolours. Too tired now to do a proper post about it, but will be back with a full report on Monday.

More on cordyceps

It's not yet Friday, but I am going on a short holiday, and there won't be any posts until 5th August. So here is a video from David Attenborough, with extraordinary footage of parasitic cordyceps fungi infecting various insects, each fungus species specialising on its own host.

There is a twist in the story - towards the end of the clip he remarks that cordyceps infection helps maintain the diversity of the forest, as it is more likely to attack species that are the most numerous, therefore preventing them from taking over ecosystems.

Enjoy! I'll be back in 10 days, with lots of foraging photos and, if all goes to plan, a report from a very special fungi-related exhibition.

Valley fever

Naussicaa film poster

Lately, I seem to keep returning to the topic of fungal disease and parasitic fungi, far too often for my liking. This blog is supposed to be about the love for fungi, but, well - life is never simple.

So I came across this news item about "valley fever", a potentially fatal illness that is endemic in Southern US, as well as parts of Mexico and Argentina. It's caused by a parasitic fungus, and while about 2/3 of infected people suffer no symptoms, in some of them coccidioidomycosis, as it is known in medical science (try saying that after a few glasses of wine!), causes breathing difficulties due to fungal growth in the lungs, and sometimes even death, if the fungus spreads to the brain.

While reading the article, I kept thinking that I'd encountered this somewhere before. Not in the real world as it happens, but in Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 animated film, "Naussicaa of the Valley of the Wind". In the fictional world of the film, people have to wear masks to protect themselves from spores that rot their lungs. Interestingly, these spores are spread by a fungal forest that is feeding on pollution and ultimately cleaning it up - something that fungi have been demonstrated to be able to do.

In the film, people live on an "island", surrounded by fungal forest on all sides, and they have nowhere to go. So they stay and fight (and eventually, make peace) with giant mutated insects, fungi and their neighbours. But in real life, why don't they just leave?..

Mushroom and beetroot salad

Just three ingredients

This recipe is more of a winter treat, but with the recent dry spell there hasn't been anything in the forest, and somehow I think it is inappropriate to go for fresh cultivated mushrooms in the middle of wild fungi season. Also, I didn't feel like complicated cooking yesterday, and this salad can be bashed together in about 5 minutes.

Ingredients:

• 300g mixed marinated mushrooms in olive oil (I used Tesco mixed wild mushroom antipasto but any similar fungi would do)
• 200g baby beetroots, boiled and peeled
• one small red onion

Great with ice-cold vodka!

Process:

Empty the contents of the marinated mushroom jar into a salad bowl. Slice the baby beetroots and the red onion. Mix well. Garnish with herbs (parsley or dill both work well) and serve. It can be eaten immediately, but will taste even better if you leave it overnight in the fridge, as the onions will release their juice into the oil and absorb sweetness (and colour!) from the beetroots. Enjoy!

No rain - but not for long

The weather forecast says that the dry heatwave is coming to an end, and this is great news for all mushroom hunters. This weekend, while waiting for the life-giving moisture to fall from the sky, I checked out the local woodland, in the mad hope that somehow, somewhere, fungal life will manifest itself.

Good news: I found some mushrooms. Bad news: they were neither edible nor easily recognisable. They were growing on a living tree about 3m above the ground  - probably some sort of polypore. Really big ones: the largest must have been 30cm or so across.

1.1 kg of wild strawberries

I do apologise for a bad picture of unexciting mushrooms - this is no good for a Monday foraging report, but hey, don't blame me. Blame Scottish weather. It is used to it anyway.

By way of tiny compensation for this disappointment, here is an image of last week's complete strawberry crop - this time I managed to snap a shot before it was gobbled up.

And now, since woodland has not been kind enough to provide, I'm off to the shops for some ingredients for tomorrow's recipe. See you soon!