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Garden Club

Would any of us ever have believed that there are in the region of 2,700 species of mushrooms? I certainly hadn't realised we had so many different kinds. Christopher Scotter, suffering from a very recent operation to pin his leg following an accident, still kindly came along to give us a fascinating talk on his vastly researched knowledge of mushrooms and toadstools. Christopher's slides were enormously colourful and varied - tall ones, fat stubby ones, thin stemmed rounded or flat tops, spotted, plain, growing from tree barks or hiding in grassland. The scope was wide. The variety of edible and deadly fungi are the stuff of dreams, be they culinary or potential horror stories. He suggested that should we find any mushrooms in a woodland setting we would be very well advised to avoid them at all cost due to the fact that there is a highly deadly variety that an untrained eye would not recognise. There is no known antidote for this mushroom so stick to the field varieties. The Vikings ingested a variety before battle to improve their skills, some are known as magic mushrooms, others are hallucinogenic, there are varieties that are hot or have antifreeze in them, the honey fungus can kill trees, the boletus mushroom is good for soups. Some mushrooms have gills under their caps others appear solid but all are almost pure protein. It is perhaps a sad reflection on the English that our interest in the widely varied delicacies of the mushroom are remarkably similar to our ignorance in relation to seafood where, if it isn't battered, it probably isn't edible.

The photographic competition was won by Pauline Wyatt.

Next Meetings:

17 November - Climbers & Wall Shrubs - Janet Cropley.

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Last modified: November 22, 2011