Fungal Foray

This is a great opportunity for people around the district to discover and learn about the vast array of strange and wonderful fungi that can be found in the Wyre Forest.

This year was going to be no exception with the foray planned for the last Sunday in September. Sadly, though, this time it was not meant to be.

Before the main event, I usually take the time to hold a fungal foray for the children of the Young Rangers Club. This is very helpful for me as I get them to use their sharp young eyes to find many a mushroom that I most probably would have just walked past.

Despite quite a determined search, though, there were only four species of fungi to be found, all of which could quite easily be discovered in the height of summer.

Growing on the trunks of rotten trees, there were two different bract fungi. One was the birch polypore or razor strop fungi, which gets its more unorthodox second name from olden times when the flesh of this mushroom was used to sharpen blades much in the same way as a barber's leather strop.

The other one found was the Daedaleopsis which is rather common and blessed with a beautiful honeycomb-like set of gills on the underside. Unlike a lot of fungi, this one has no nice name.

Joining these were the equally common sulphur tuft fungi which, apart from this year, are usually found growing on rotting tree stumps in their hundreds.

Finally, during our foray we found the earthball, which was the only fungus we found growing from the ground. This mushroom is one of the so-called stomach fungi due to its stomach-shaped appearance. It is host to millions of spores which it contains on the inside.

Unfortunately, due to such a poor show, I had no choice but to call this year's main event off.

The reason for this is down to the dry weather. It will take at least a good day's downpour to moisten things up enough for the fruiting fungi bodies to appear.

I doubt the drought will have done them much harm though, as fungi on the whole are quite a resilient bunch.

For most of the time a fungus is just a mass of cotton wool-like threads of hyphae which intertwine within the soil or whatever it is feeding on.

Fungi only make their presence felt when they come into bloom and produce the distinctive mushroom structures we usually encounter.

I hope that, despite the total lack of fungi found on last month's foray, as soon as we get a good wet spell the woods will once again become filled with them.