The Love Of Fungi

Mushroom expert and podcast host Lynne Campbell reveals the beauty, mystery and magic of mushrooms

- Lynne Campbell

GROWING up in rural Angus (in my opinion, the most underrated and bonnie place in the country) I spent a lot of time outside: feeding my neighbour's lambs in the spring, building dams in the local burn in the summer and sledging in winter.

In the autumn - that most magical time of the year - I spent my time mushroom hunting.

My dad (farmworker, mole trapper, eel fisherman and connoisseur of the weird and wonderful items that you can pick up in rural Angus pubs if you ken the right folk) would take me out looking for field mushrooms - squat, white-capped buttons with buff-pink gills that sprout from grassland in wide fairy rings.

He would show me how to pick and identify them, then we'd take them to a local hotel to sell for a wee bit of extra cash. In my childhood, a spore of obsession was starting to germinate, but it wouldn't be until I went to university in Dundee that it would really take hold.

I loved living in the city, but I needed to get out to green spaces to find balance. I'm grateful that Dundee is surrounded by woods that are easy enough to get to.

It was stravaiging about the woods and green spaces around Dundee, taking photos of plants and mushrooms, that I came to a realisation: fungi are beautiful and very important, and I'd do what I could to share their magic.

Fungi are incredibly varied in their type, colour and size, and any one patch of woodland in Scotland can be host to many weird and wonderful fungal forms.

Amethyst deceivers light up the forest floor with their bright purple, fibrous stems and smooth caps.