Mushroom Magic

Fungi can be deadly dangers or marvels of medicine, but all are fundamental to the balance of life

- POLLY PULLAR

WALK through a wood on a beautiful, still, autumnal day and stand to absorb the scene.

You may hear jays, their shrill, almost human cries echoing through the trees as they collect acorns, burying them for future consumption. Perhaps a blackbird or wren is scolding an owl perched in its daytime roost.

Leaves drift on to the sylvan floor, bracken at the woodland edge has transformed into a palette of bronze, gold and ochre, and a glorious array of fungi begins to push its way through the warm, damp earth.

It may also be on tree trunks, in damp hollows within rotting logs it could be anywhere. What most of us are unaware of is that beneath our feet, underground, a magnificent, continuous fungal latticework of mycelium is never still, communicating and working with thousands of living organisms-transforming, nourishing, creating, altering, killing, digesting and clearing, and in dozens of different ways influencing our lives.

Fungi and trees are inextricably linked. Fungi, seen and unseen, surrounds us, but it is in autumn that we become most aware of it as we witness the fruiting bodies we recognise as mushrooms and toadstools. Fungi is everywhere in one form or another - even in us.

Fungi are the third natural kingdom next to plants and animals. They are an extensive group including moulds, yeasts and mushrooms. They obtain nutrients through absorbing organic matter from their surroundings.

While all mushrooms are fungi, not all fungi are mushrooms. To further complicate things, "toadstool" is often used to refer to fungi with a stem and a cap or to poisonous fungi. "Mushroom" is used more frequently to describe edible fungi. However, these are general terms and not definitive descriptions. There's no scientific difference between a toadstool and a mushroom.