Baby Beefsteak

 

I spotted a baby Beefsteak fungi (Fistulina hepatica) tucked away in the ragged bole of a fallen veteran tree. It was fresh and completely unmarked. It looked as if the tree were sticking its' tongue out at us, or blowing a raspberry. Made me think. Mushroom season will be coming around soon. If it remains as dry as it has been though, mushroom season will be a very thin affair indeed.

Fungi

 

A little reminder of the potential seasonal bounty to come, a young Beefsteak fungus (Fistulina hepatica) errupts from a ancient beech trunk. Soon throughout the stands and amongst the woodland fringes the fungi realm will reign. It's a fascinating world, and one we've yet to fully understand, though we know enough to know they're essential to the whole damn thing. Plenty are edible too, several classified as edible good, though just as many are not, and if you're not 110% certain, leave well alone, some mushrooms are fatal. And as for Beefsteak fungus? Well, it's an edible, and I've eaten it on a couple of occassions in the past and will pass on eating it again in the future; bitter, rubbery, weird, would all be appropriate adjectives to employ. It looks a wrongun too.

Red velvet

Usually the Beefsteak fungi (Fistulina hepatica) I see have a burgundy hue to them, this example on a long ago fallen trunk was bright red; popping out of a fold in the wood it looked as if the tree was sticking it's tongue out at me, or blowing a raspberry. How rude.   

Beefsteak

Add Beefsteak mushroom (Fistulina hepatica) to the list of mushrooms out and about.

Beefsteak

Beefsteak mushrooms (Fistulina hepatica) are popping up all over the forest; distinctive in colour and soft fleshy appearance they're easy to spot growing most predominantly on Oak and Chestnut; many you'll find are quite small, although they can grow to a fair size; they're so distinctive that you're unlikely to be able to misidentify them. They're also edible cooked or raw, though I'll be honest they're not to my taste, too weirdly sour. Remember, never collect any wild food you're not 100% sure of it.

Beefsteak

As a large Beefsteak fungi decays on the woodland floor, it's easy to see how it got it's name. Although, I think 'porksteak' may be more appropriate, as I think the fungi's flesh looks akin to pulled pork.

Rude trees

I know you'd think trees are cool, and all that, but they can be rude too. This cheeky bugger stuck his tongue out at me as I passed by. It was an Oak of course, Rush warned us about the Oaks.

Dry Spy

The woodland and woodland fringe fungal communities of Red Rise appear to have faired far better than their more exposed community neighbours on the open heathland and lawn of Spy Holms. It's by no means been a bumper mushroom season in the forest, though some woodland inhabitants like Chicken of the Woods, Beefsteak and Oysters have been well represented, the Boletes were respectable and there are plenty of Hedgehog mushrooms too (as have loads of other mushrooms/fungi).  It's a very different story on the adjacent exposed open lawn and heath. Usually covered in a really diverse community, this year...nought!  Or near nought. I've seen two Parasols, when commonly it would dozens, no Wax Caps, no Puffballs, no Liberty Caps, and very little beyond. Where normally you'd have to look where you're stepping, you can look but there's nothing to see, it's barren.  Drier autumns don't do mushrooms any service, I hope they don't become too frequent.

Sign of the times

We're nearing summers end, and as I mentioned yesterday, autumn's coming, and it's outriders are already arriving. Beefsteak fungi (Fistulina hepatica) typically appear in late summer, staying until mid autumn, to me they're a sign of things changing and summers twilight. I've eaten them in the past (although probably not cooked them as effectively as I should have, and they weren't young ones like this), young ones are best for eating and need to be cooked well (particularly so as they age and toughen), they tend to look a touch gammy as they get older, a bit slimy, and as it's name implies, a bit meaty. When young and fresh it has quite an alien appearance, as it ages it takes on a more familiar bracket appearance. It's one on my 'safe-ish' list, edible and hard to wrongly identify. That said, remember, never collect and certainly don't consume ANY mushroom you are not 110% certain you've identified correctly. 

Steak

The award for most prevalent fungi of the woods goes to......the Beefsteak (Fistulina hepatica).  Fungi seasons are fickle, last year these woods were flush with Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus), whereas this year they were scarce. This year Beefsteaks are in abundance, though last year were hard to find.  Is it natural cycles or environmentally prompted? I don't know. It's something.

Oi, cheeky!

I swear this tree was sticking his tongue out at me, cheeky bugger!

Mushroom season

As autumn falls so fungi's reign begins. It's still early in the season, and it's still quite dry, but the frequency with which you see mushrooms is slowly increasing. Some of those mushrooms are edible favourites. Today I saw Beefsteak (Fistulina hepatica), nearing the end of its season some Chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) and the often present Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus).  Commercial picking has long been forbidden in the forest, although collecting for personal consumption up to 1.5kg has been permitted. I say permitted as the Forestry Commission have just announced that mushroom picking has been banned throughout the forest, full stop. What nonsense, based on little scientific evidence, in fact, the evidence suggests that picking helps fungi communities, or at least has no negative effects. Also, there are a couple of thousand types of mushroom in the forest and of those only a tiny handful are collected to eat. The other reason they say, are these mythical hoards of organized pickers sweeping the forest, well they may, although in 30 years of forest foraging I've never seen them, or evidence of them. This ban follows a worrying trend, such as some local councils bans on collecting wild berries. Foraging is our human right, wild food is just that, wild and therefore in my mind at least free. Few even forage anyway, and the seasonal increase sometimes seen in the forest is driven by the media harking on about how much fungi is worth, encouraging people to collect, the same media that then runs angry stories about too many people collecting mushrooms.  As I say, I've been collecting mushrooms for years, you have good years and not so good and in both I always see countless mushrooms go uncollected. Stop publicising mushroom collecting as a profitable activity, stop creating and fuelling the problem, and see the numbers of those picking drop back to just those who are into it for the right reason and pick responsibly. Anyway, I can't see it being enforceable, if the can't stop the hoards (oh, that's right, they can't because they're bloody mythical), then how are they going to stop the responsible individual.  And more to the point, why bother? What's the real agenda here?

Cleft Oak

A cleft Oak we came across on our way across Rotherley Down, it was quite hollow, though still very sturdy, and inside it several juvenile Beef Steak fungi (Fistulina hepatica) were growing. Nice tree.