Winter fungi

Autumn is of course the happiest hunting time for the mycologist. But if you want to make your collection on fungi, all is not yet lost. There are various species still out there, and they're often easier to preserve, because they're not the soft-fleshed mushroom-style fruiting bodies.

You have to raise your eyes up from the ground and start looking on tree trunks, stumps, longs and twigs.

You might see the Horse's Hoof fungus, Fomes fomentarius. You don't have to use too much imagination to see the derivation of its common name?

CC image by George Chervilensky.

Ötzi, the man who was inadvertently preserved in the ice of the Alps between Austria and Italy for 5000 years, was carrying some of this fungus. He very likely used it as tinder (you can read about this on Paul Kirtly's blog and prepare your own).

Another species you might find is Piptoporus betulinus, the birch polypore. You'll want to find a silver birch tree first though of course.

CC image by Captainpixel.

This also has a traditional use - stropping razors. Here's a clip of Ray Mears sharpening his knife on a prepared piece of the fungus. Accompanied by jolly Irish music I'm afraid.

Another species that will be useful come the impending apocalypse will be Daldinia concentrica, commonly known as crampballs, or King Alfred's cakes (as you may recall, he burnt them).

CC image by Walter Baxter.

They always look like sheep droppings to me when whole. But inside they have an interesting concentric structure.

CC image by Stu's images.

If you light this it'll burn slowly and you can therefore (as I say, following the apocalypse) carry your fire easily from one camp to another. Just to warn you, they burn quietly, and I've burnt my fingers on one thinking it was insufficiently lit. Here's someone lighting one on youtube. If you blow on a lit one the concentric rings light up most elegantly (you'll have to try it).

Finally, you might fancy something a bit more edible. Auricularia auricula-judae is also very common. You are likely to find it on elder bushes (where you find one, there will probably be lots). Its common name, Jew's Ear came from the story of Judas being hanged on an Elder tree. These days you'll probably see it called 'Jelly Ear', and when it's been raining, it's certainly very jelly-like. And very ear-like. Even to the point of being a bit freaky. The small ones certainly look like little mouse ears - they're rather clammy and slightly furry.

CC image by Svdmolen.

If you check out the ingredients of Batchelor's Woodland Mushroom Cup-a-soup, there it is providing the mushroomyness. It certainly dehydrates and rehydrates very well. If you see it in dry weather it will be much smaller and much crispier.

A winter specimen for Asteraceae collectors

I ventured out into the gloom yesterday for a little walk and found lots of Petasites fragrans (Winter Heliotrope) in flower. I realised that for years I have been ignorantly calling this 'butterbur', but that species (Petasites hybridus) is much much bigger. You'll be able to collect the latter in the spring.

CC image by Phil Sellens

It seems a funny time to flower, but Winter Heliotrope compensates for this by having a strong vanilla-y scent. I suppose if you're one of the only flowers around and you advertise well, any nectar-hungry insects still out and about are going to find you. So perhaps it's a good, if rather alternative strategy.

However, for the poor Winter Heliotrope in the UK, it's apparently all in vain. I read that it's a garden escape and actually native to Southern Europe, and only in the wild here since the 1830s - and that (curiously) it is dioecious and only male plants exist in this country.

How, in that case, can it have spread through the country, as there can't be any seeds? Apparently the plant is a perennial and has rhizomes, and a tiny piece of detached rhizome can sprout to form new plants. So the species is said to have spread through the dumping of garden waste, and spreads along water courses by the adventurous floating of rhizomey bits. It likes damp places so this is ideal (mine were in a damp uncut meadow under a big tree... suspiciously near the back of someone's garden).

The leaves are distinctively kidney-shaped and you'll normally find many plants in the same spot, smothering the ground.

CC image by Rosser1954