Autumn arrives

Autumn arrives with a heavy downpour and a profusion of fungi. They sprout everywhere – among the seedlings I planted in garden beds, on the side of a tree stump, in the middle of the walking trail, in the piles of horse poo the dung beetles have worked over in the paddock. Bright orange brackets and tiny caps of burnished gold. Bulbous puffballs bursting through the ground one day and disappearing the next.

The fungi that appear so rapidly in autumn are fruiting bodies, not the whole organism. Mushrooms, toadstools, puffballs and brackets. The rest of the organism is below the surface, fine strands of mycelium winding through the soil unseen. They are decomposers, breaking down organic matter as they consume it. Fungi do not photosynthesise; they need to obtain their nutrients from other sources. They are not plants. Nor animals. They are a whole kingdom of life on their own. And of vital importance to ecosystems, playing a critical role in nutrient cycling. Yet they are little known.

I bought a book about the fungi in my region in the hope of being able to identify them and perhaps gaining enough knowledge to safely sample some. (The Magical World of Fungi by Patricia Negus, 2^nd edition, 2014, Cape to Cape Publishing.) There are some notoriously poisonous fungi out there, some of which look a lot like edible species. I flick through the book and am amazed at both the artist’s skill in rendering the pictures and the beauty of the fungi. But identification largely eludes me. Still, I learn some things and am reminded of things I already knew, and I find my eyes are sharper when looking for fungi when I am out and about.

According to The Magical World of Fungi, there are about 10-20,000 species of macrofungi in Australia but vastly more that are microscopic and therefore mostly unseen. Of those that we do see, only about a fifth have been described and named. Our knowledge of this vast kingdom is severely limited. Our fungal research and knowledge tends to concentrate on things of immediate relevance to people’s activities – the things that are useful or detrimental to agriculture, medicine and forestry. The broader knowledge about ecosystem health and ecology attracts even less funding and is less known.

In childhood, going mushrooming was a favoured activity. With buckets, knives and friends we roamed paddocks and the local golf course for hours. We were told to pick only the mushrooms that were white or pale brown on top with black or pink gills underneath. Anything with white gills was to be avoided, to not even be touched. The puffballs we kicked, sending clouds of yellow-brown spores floating through the air. We searched for fairy rings – that perfect circle of mushrooms. Fairy rings form not because they are gathering places for fairies, but because that is the edge of the spread of that particular organism – the mycelium spread below the soil and, in some species, the fruiting bodies pop up at the edges of the mycelial network, creating a circle of mushrooms or toadstools. More fanciful explanations were of greater delight in childhood.

As a child I loved mushrooming but hated eating mushrooms. After we’d been mushrooming and come home with our buckets full, Mum used to cook them in butter and serve them on toast for breakfast. I thought they looked like black slime and refused to be tempted. She tried to entice me by topping them with a poached egg (which worked with lots of things), but that seemed like a waste of an egg to me. I preferred the egg on its own, without the mushrooms.

As an adult, I came to love the taste of mushrooms but became fearful of picking the wrong ones. A case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing – I knew there were poisonous mushrooms and toadstools out there and was worried I would pick one accidentally. I took to buying mushrooms instead. Mushrooms shifted from an autumnal event to an everyday possibility. As kids the only time mushrooms were eaten in the household was after the foraging trips in autumn and winter. Now the flurry of fungal activity in paddock and forest as the rains begin does not lead to the smell of mushrooms sautéing in butter in my kitchen. A shift has occurred in the way mushrooms are consumed in my, and many, households.

I’m going to have to look up whether those little black mushrooms sprouting in the horse poo are edible or not.

Thanks for reading,

Jill

Inside

There is a small box on the floor in my office. It came in the post last week. I can’t recall ever being as excited to receive a parcel. Ten copies of What’s for Dinner? delivered to the author (me!). Holding my book in my hands for the first time was surreal. I’m thrilled with how it looks and can’t wait until it is launched into the world next month. I’ll post details of the book launch and other events as plans coalesce.

If you are in Australia, you can buy What’s for Dinner? from your local bookshop after 1 June. (If they don’t have it, ask them to order it in; we need to support local bookshops.) It will also be available to order online. Or you can subscribe as a Foundation supporter to Mostly Outside and I’ll send you a signed copy.