The Fungal Foray

It was an overcast Saturday in October, my friend Charlie drove me up to Thetford to join a group of nature enthusiasts to forage around the forest floor in search of fungus.

We met up with the group and after a few words from our 'guide' we dispanded to forage in our pairs with instructions to meet back in a couple of hours with any fungus that we found.

Although it hadn't been a very wet autumn so far and hadn't created an idea growing habitat for fungus the group as a whole found a massive array of mushrooms. They ranged from the edible to the deadly poisonous and everything in between. The guide talked us through all of our finds and spent a long time telling us about the 'Death Cap' which a member of the group had found. This mushroom is so deadly it can kill you within 36 hours and one hand-sized mushroom contains enough poison to kill about 6 adults.
You can distinguish the Death Cap from the false death cap by the 'sack' it grows out of at the base of it's stem however it's never a god idea to eat a mushroom unless you're 100% sure what it is!
The Death Cap Mushroom


The guide also told us about the 'Fly Agaric' or magic mushroom. It gets it's name from being sliced into milk to keep away flys. But it is better known for it's looks: it is the traditional toadstool from childrens fairy tales; white stem, red cap with white flecks on it.

According to our guide people in Scandinavia feed slices of dried Fly Agaric to their reindeer, wath them stuble around then drink the reindeer urine which contains a filtered version of the psychoactive compounds muscimol and ibotentic acid. You've got to wonder how that was first discovered.....

Apparently the story of Santa Claus, his flying reindeer and his red coat and white beard originate from this mushroom and its powers as a natural high....
Fly Agaric

We had planned to eat whatever mushroomy goodies we turned up. Sadly our haul only contained one edible mushroom: Charlie spotted it growing all alone on a tree trunk. This specimen was apparently very rare and a relation to the oyster mushroom; a small white mushroom with a bend in the stem, it had ribbed gills that stretched all the way from underneath the cap right down the stem.


So, we fried it in a little butter and ate it on top of toasted brioche with a squeeze of lemon. It was good.