SueScape

By SueScape

Honey fungus?

I believe this might be a variety of honey fungus, or dark honey fungus (Armillaria ostoyae, ), growing on a stump on the verge outside our neighbours garden. If it is, he ought to be getting rid of it very soon, it likes and kills oak trees. It doesn't matter to the fungus if it kills the tree, it lives just as happily on the dead wood as the living as you can see here.

It is long lived and prolific. Wiki says the largest known patch of honey fungus covers more than 3.4 square miles and is thousands of years old. I'd like to see that ...

I mentioned my mushroom foraging with Hungarian friends the other day. They say in Eastern Europe honey fungus is quite a delicacy, but must be well cooked as it is poisonous in the raw state. Not sure I have the nerve to try it.

Mushrooms

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

Sylvia Plath

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