subject: Lake District plants and fungus [print this page] Actually the honey fungus has for centuries been regarded with suspicious awe. There is a peculiar reason. Years ago on a summer evening I had gathered a large quantity of dead oak wood which had been piled on the ground at the edge of the nearby forest after felling. The branches were of such a thickness that they could be cut by one or two blows of a felling axe rather than by sawing. So I spent a busy few hours cutting up hearth size lengths. Later that evening I walked in the darkness past the chopping block which I had been using. As I approached I became aware of a weird green light.
Then I saw that the whole of the floor area around the block was lit by the light of luminous fragments of wood. I picked up the glowing pieces and with one of them I could read the time on my watch. I scooped up chips by the handful and poured them in a luminous waterfall onto the ground. I carried some into the darkness of my home and they glowed on the kitchen table. The luminous wood was almost certainly permeated with the mycelium of honey fungus, which becomes luminous within a certain temperature range.
Some other fungi have the same strange property. Dr John Rams bottom, a leading British authority on fungi, records a similar experience. Troops digging trenches at Arnhem in October 1944 were surprised to find the trenches shining with luminous wood. Tree roots glowed when they were split open. A specimen was later sent to Dr Rams bottom who identified the mycelium of honey fungus.
The phenomenon is familiar to foresters, and miners sometimes see it in the timbers deep underground. Centuries ago a tree affected by honey fungus with some parts glowing in the dark would be regarded as magic. A glowing wand take from it could easily be believed to have special powers.
To me some fungi are as beautiful as flowering plants. The obvious one to excite the eye is the fly agaric, Amanita muscaria. This is the toadstool of red and white portrayed in children's books, the home of elves and pixies. Its odd name arises from the reports that it was of old used as an insecticide. The white spots are the broken remnants of the veil which encloses the juvenile stage of the fruiting body. The fly agaric is dangerous if eaten, but in very small quantities it has long been known for its powers of intoxication. In certain parts of Eastern Europe it is added to alcoholic drinks to increase their effect. It has been suggested too that the Viking raiders used the drug to produce a suitable state of frenzy before attack. The fungus is not a parasite; on the contrary, it lives in mycorrhizal association with pines and birches, and it must have marched with these first colonizers, following the retreat of the ice age glaciers.
I have other favorites. The bright glowing orange peel fungus, Aleuria Aurania, appears on forest tracks; it almost seems to glow with an inner light. The parasol mushroom, Macrolepiota procure, looks like a pretty fabric covered parasol, but the delicious nutty flavor is its great attraction for me. I also search the floor of October woods for the bright yellow chanterelle, another culinary delight. It comes sometimes plentifully after a lot of rain and it benefits the beech trees among whose roots it grows. One not at all edible, but to me strangely fascinating, is the bracket fungus which grows on birch trees. This is the tough 'razor strop' fungus, Piptoporus betulinus. The fungus, plucked from a trunk, is like tough thick leather and feels indestructible. If it could take nails it could probably make good boot soles.
There is hardly a dying birch in my woods unaffected by this parasite and whether the fungus came to affect the dead wood, or whether it caused the tree's deaths is not known. Pure birch woods are sometimes rather dangerous to an unwary explorer. Brushing against what looks like sound trunks (as the silver bark is immune to rot) can sometimes bring infected trunks and their high branches down upon your head. Another attractive, but poisonous, fungus is sculpture tuft, Hypholoma jasciculare, which grows in great yellow clumps on dead wood _ particularly on an old log by my front gate regularly each autumn.
