Inspiring Fungi

Thoughts about mushrooms and toadstools

Although some fungi are visible at all times of year, autumn is the season most renowned for toadstools and mushrooms. I don't want to go into the details of fungi biology, because other people have done that so much better than I could, see, for example the post below from Nature Unveiled, the Substack from the High Life Highland Rangers working in the Scottish Highlands:

Fun Guy or Foe? - by High Life Highland Ranger

One of my favourite places in Edinburgh to find a good variety of fungi is Corstorphine Hill, where my partner and I went for a walk on Saturday. We saw a range of fungi, including these puffballs, which are clearly showing the holes at the top where the spores come out when the fungus is poked or hit by a falling raindrop

One of the writing groups I facilitate focuses largely on prompts to get people writing. We have two prompts in every session plus a homework prompt. So I need to come up with quite a lot of ideas for prompts, particularly as many people in the group have been coming along for many years so I can't repeat prompts too often! Last week, one of the prompts I used was 'mushrooms'. I told everyone in the group that they could interpret this as they wished. One person wrote about the mushroom cloud of nuclear bombs, but everyone else wrote about wild fungi, including nature observations; a parable about climate change featuring a fairy sitting on a toadstool contemplating the mycelium network radiating out into the world; and a warning that mushroom porridge might not be to everyone's tastes. As we had a few minutes left at the end of class, we moved into a more general discussion about fungi, including someone's discovery of a stinkhorn toadstool in her garden (these smelly fungi are luckily very ephemeral so the smell doesn't hang around for long.) You can read more about stinkhorns in this interesting post from the Nature Notice Board Newsletter:

Witch's Eggs & Stinkhorns for Samhain

I was impressed by how interested everyone was in fungi, and how knowledgeable too, given that this is a general writing group, not a group of nature writers.

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If you’re interested in finding out more about Scotland’s fungi, the Scottish Fungi website has a lot of useful resources.