River Cottage mushroom foray (picture heavy)

[Buckshot]

For my birthday present I was lucky enough to have a days’ mushroom foraging curtosy of Hugh Furnly Whittingstall and River Cottage.

River Cottage

I travelled down the night before and stayed in a farm B&B about 20 mins or so away from River Cottage. RCHQ itself is situated on the Dorset/ Devon border near Axminster.
The day started at 10am with a quick welcome from Steve (the RC rep/ frontman) and John Wright (the mushroom expert - the same one you see with Hugh on the TV)
Then we piled into the coach for a 20 min ride to the wood. Got out and within a couple of feet we'd found our first fungi !

One of the early ones found was the stink horn which maybe would have better found towards the end of the woodland walk - it certainly lived up to it’s name !

At lunch time we walked the 50 metres back to the coach and had an RC pasties and pork pie (very nice) then back to wandering aimlessly through the wood staring at the ground.

We picked over 50 different kinds of fungi and John was able to ID all but about 3 to the exact type. The others he managed to go to the species but no further without spending time with his nose in the books! Pretty impressive I think

About 2pm or so we went back to RCHQ and sat in a wonderful yurt with a huge wood burner in the middle for 5 mins while the kitchen got sorted.

Then we went to the barn for a demo on ways in which to cook the mushrooms - not the ones we'd found because most of them weren't edible!
They had a huge mirror set at 45% above the chef so everyone could see what was happening.

Then back to the yurt so they could move the tables around in the barn. By now John had printed off labels of all the fungi we'd found and he went through each one again pointing out the distinguishing marks etc. particularly with the death cap.

The barn had changed into a dining room with a long table and we sat down to a mushroom themed, four course 'late lunch' at about 4pm. Mushrooms on toast, mushroom tart (one of the ones in the demo), chicken and mushroom casserole (again in the demo) with mash and carrots and a fruit sponge with raspberry sauce
All in all very nice, we could wander round if we wanted to and I had a look in the kitchen garden.
As you might expect all the RC books were available so I bought the new mushroom book and DVD written by John. He even signed it for me too. John said the book isn’t intended to be a complete library of all fungi, rather a reference of around 65 of the more common edible mushrooms and about 20 or so of the poisonous toadstools. It also has some recipes in it too.

Great day had by all I think
The following day I had an email asking for views on the course and giving me access to the online mushroom course that is available once you attend the foraging day.
So there you have it, a great, fun day and one I would definitely recommend

Mark

 

[xylaria]

That sounds like an excellant well structured course. The follow up course sounds like the best feature. The bit that scares me when someone goes on about mushroom days with experts, is that some idoits can get a tick box attidute towards bushcraft skills. We have all met someone who has done a course on something and think they know it all, with fungi that attitude is a death sentence. It is great the course asks you to do work afterwards.

 

[Buckshot]

Absolutely, couldn't agree more.
John was continually stressing there are no short cuts when it comes to IDing fungi.
All of the old wife's tales have exceptions, some of them deadly so one of his first rules is don't eat it if you can't identify it from several different sources
He's spent 30 years learning them so he has a bit of a head start!

 

[Bernie Garland]

Glad you had a great time John,and learnt a bit.

Bernie

 

[Greg]

Sounds like you had a great day out . Good Birthday present!
I have just come back from a walk in the woods with John Fenna, and we saw an abundant amount of fungi all of which we couldn't identify. The saying for the day was "I need to do a fungi course!!" but like Xylaria said doing a course doesn't make you an expert overnight.

 

[Tadpole]

That sounds like an excellant well structured course. The follow up course sounds like the best feature. The bit that scares me when someone goes on about mushroom days with experts, is that some idoits can get a tick box attidute towards bushcraft skills. We have all met someone who has done a course on something and think they know it all, with fungi that attitude is a death sentence. It is great the course asks you to do work afterwards.

I simple question, if, as has been said, not many of the mushrooms picked were edible, why pick them? I can understand if they were unidentified, but to pick them knowing what they were why and how they grow, surely that adds nothing to the sum of the possible knowledge gained. I know they are just the “fruiting body” of a much larger organism, but I can see no benefit to the plant, to the person learning, or to the expert. So is it harmful or beneficial or neither, to pick mushrooms on a regular basis

I'm only quoting you xylaria so some people don't get all bent out of shape when I show my lack of knowledge by asking a simple question. I’d google the answer but that would upset even more people. Or just maybe the same ones

 

[Mikey P]

I really wanted to do one of these courses and I actually bought the book a while back ... but have you seen the prices!

They are well over £100 a day!

As I say, I really wanted to do one, and from the report above, they look really good - but I just can't afford it. A real shame.

 

[xylaria]

The reason you need to pick one of every fungi you see when you are learning, I'll explian as follows: Everyone knows what a blackberry look like, you go for bimble, and see a dewberry, you have never seen one before but you know it most proberly related to a blackberry. Then you see deadly nightshade, you know it most diffenatly is no reation to blackberry, dispite being black and berry like. The vast majority of poeple have a great amount of knowledge plants without knowing it because at some point in childhood someone said that is blackberry and dandilion or a daisy. With fungi british people have as their cultural modalling toadstool and tescos. So the reason expert teaching beginners pick every mushroom is so a grasp of what makes webcap a webcap, or milkcap a milkcap can be reached.

I don't pick everthing i come across just eaters and ones i don't know. It is vertually impossible to ID and unknown fungi while standing there in the field. Noramally they have to picked, sniffed, spore printed and sometimes tasted.

The cheaper way learning about fungi is to join a local fungi group, you have work hard for your knowledge whatever way you go.
http://fungus.org.uk/

 

[johnnytheboy]

What a great present for your birthday, fantastic day by the looks of it

 

[falling rain]

Sounds like a fantastic day Mark. I'm very poor on funghi ID I'm going to have to get on a similar course to start me off properly on learning more.
Glad you had a good time mate.

Nick

 

[robin wood]

The reason you need to pick one of every fungi you see when you are learning, I'll explian as follows: Everyone knows what a blackberry look like, you go for bimble, and see a dewberry, you have never seen one before but you know it most proberly related to a blackberry. Then you see deadly nightshade, you know it most diffenatly is no reation to blackberry, dispite being black and berry like. The vast majority of poeple have a great amount of knowledge plants without knowing it because at some point in childhood someone said that is blackberry and dandilion or a daisy. With fungi british people have as their cultural modalling toadstool and tescos. So the reason expert teaching beginners pick every mushroom is so a grasp of what makes webcap a webcap, or milkcap a milkcap can be reached.

]

We don't routinely pick wild flowers to identify them should we pick fungi?

This is a good explanation and I am quite happy for an expert leading a group where 20 odd? people can learn from the removal of a single fruiting body. I think it is not necessarily a good idea to teach it as a standard practice though. What if all those folk from all those courses go out to the woods picking masses of stuff every weekend? I remember about 15 years ago going on an organised fungi foray at Bedgbury Pinetum a sssi because of its funghi. We got to the car park and found it to be covered in squashed fruiting bodies, it turned out Antonio Carlucio had mentioned it as one of his favourite collecting spots the week before on TV. Lots of folk had been out collecting big basketfulls of stuff, got back to the car, consulted the books and found a few they were not sure about so dumped the lot in the car park.

I think it is something that should be done in moderation, I carry a guide and if i need to see bits I can't access easily sometimes I will simply break off a small portion of the cap leaving the rest to fruit.

 

[FGYT]

I really wanted to do one of these courses and I actually bought the book a while back ... but have you seen the prices!

They are well over £100 a day!

As I say, I really wanted to do one, and from the report above, they look really good - but I just can't afford it. A real shame.

theres this lot tho thay are Possibley a little dry and not just into edible fungi

http://www.dorsetfungusgroup.com/

ATB

Duncan

 

[Buckshot]

The thing is one of the identifying markers on fungi is the swelling at the bottom of the stem and also other things below ground level on some fungi.
If you feel you shouldn't pick them in order to identify them you carry on - just don't invite me to a mushroom dinner!
I prefer to use all the evidence I can to prove that it's what I think it is

It seems to be the recognised way that all the experts do it. I think I'll be guided by them

Mark

 

[harlequin]

How else will you be able to get a spore print for positive ID?

 

[robin wood]

Now don't get me wrong I am not going off on one and I am not desperately upset here but I do find it an interesting point of discussion. How would we feel if this had been a post about a wild flower identification course on which a large group of folk had set off by coach to a site known to be good for wild flowers, picked a load and headed back and spread them out on the table with names on them? Is there a difference? I do not believe that all those fungi were picked because they needed to be for identification purposes. Tell me for instance what the stinkhorn could be mistaken for and how picking it helped things? No this was done so that folk could produce a nice display and take photos etc.

Now as I said to begin with I think picking one so that a large number of folk can learn to identify it is maybe not such a bad thing but the idea that picking them is a necessary step in ID of any fungi seems very similar to the Victorian attitude that a bird could only be positively identified once you had shot it. There are not that many times when you need a spore print to get a positive species ID and I have no problem with you picking one in those situations (though 1/4 cap will give you enough) particularly if you are doing some sort of proper recording, feeding info on species back to the property managers etc. I do question if its a good idea for large numbers of folk to go out picking lots of fungi taking them home and half identifying them then chucking them in the bin what is wrong with getting on your belly for a good look, excavate around the base to see the volva, look under the cap at the gills or break a section off, why do we treat them so differently to wild flowers?

"It seems to be the recognised way that all the experts do it. I think I'll be guided by them" Well as I said experts used to shoot birds and pick wild flowers in order to get a positive ID, attitudes change. As for the mushroom dinner thing I don't eat any without picking them first.

 

[xylaria]

fungi aren't like flowers. Flowers haven't had the chance to make seed when they are picked, when fungi are picked the disturbance causes spore to be ejected in the air. When mushroom pickers pick off the slugs insects, etc germinated spore in released into the ecosystem. When mushroom hunters walk about with an open weave basket yet more spore is released into the ecosystem.

The main reason fungi produce fruit bodies of various levels of edibility is to increase their chances of reproducing with a greater variation of genes. They can sort of reproduce without making fruit bodies, but without the genetic variance. The fruit bodies have evolved to eaten by something. Badgers squirrels insects etc are supposed to come along eat the fruit body and either disperse the spores that stick to their fur or germinate the spore in their guts, and then deposit the germinated spore with a good dollop of nutrients. It is not fully known why some fungi are poisonous to some animals, but some with fungi such as dung dependant liberty caps it maybe because cows like the effect that consuming them has on them.

If i find a singular fruit body I do take a cake slice to ID it, but this is more for others to come along and enjoy to mushroom. It doesn't really matter to me or the mushroom if these others are squirrels or mycologists. Generally fungi have to looked at in such detail to get an absolute ID that taking photos and field notes just is not enough.

when I was pregnant i sent mr xylaria down a steep bank to get what looked like morel, he got there and said "I think a fox or something has crapped on it". I said give it sniff, and he nearly gagged. so stinkhorns can be mistaken for other things.

 

[Mistwalker]

I am just now getting into fungi ID, thanks for this post I enjoyed it very much!

 

[Mikey P]

theres this lot tho thay are Possibley a little dry and not just into edible fungi

http://www.dorsetfungusgroup.com/

ATB

Duncan

Actually, we were out with them last week at West Moors - it's the first foray we've done and it was very educational. We looked at all fungi that we could find: edible, non-edible, poisonous. All were identified and the edible ones were taken home by those that found them. We were lucky enough to get a parasol which was very good in an omelette but there were shedloads of amethyst deceivers and quite a few brown birch boletes, as well as one cep. We also found a species that, whilst it doesn't seem to have a common name, was immensely poisonous and were all had a good look at it at the end of the walk. In fact, all of the mushrooms were laid out on a table and then grouped and identified for everyone's benefit. Really interesting.

However, I should point out that the field visits to various places are not looking solely for edible species and it would be rude to dismiss learning about something just because you can't eat it. We really enjoyed it and will be going out with the DFG again.