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Winter Fungi

If you thought the fungus foraging season finished at the end of November, think again! Some fungi can freeze solid, thaw out and STILL taste good! One of the better-known types that can be frozen are Oyster Mushrooms, but in January, they are hard to find.

You are most likely to come across Flammulina velutipes, the Winter Mushroom, and it is hard to mistake it. Firstly, there won’t be many alternatives. Secondly, it has a distinctive, slimy, yellow-brown cap, cream gills and – the give-away – dark brown, tough, velvety stems. It grows in long-lasting dense clusters on fallen branches or logs.

Winter Mushroom tastes best when the stems are cut off and the caps, after a quick wash to remove the sliminess, are shallow fried whole in butter. They do not have a strong taste, but are satisfying and pretty. The caps can also be dried or, of course, frozen.

I am very partial to the Jew’s Ear Fungus, Auricula auricularia-judae. Its resemblance in texture and shape to an ear is obvious. It got its curious name because it grows, almost exclusively, on elder branches. Elder is said to be the tree from which Judas Iscariot hung himself after the death of Christ, and early Christians, putting two and two together and making five, decided this fungus must have been inflicted on the tree as a reminder of “the” Jew, Judas.

Folklore aside, it makes a tasty side dish, with careful cooking. DON’T fry it in hot fat, because it will blow up like a balloon and then explode all over the cooker (and you). Very gentle simmering with a lid on the pot, for at least half an hour, is good, and I add a little milk to the cooking liquid. Again, it’s mild in flavour but hot on texture – you could add some herbs or caraway if you wanted.

Slime Mould

But the most extraordinary find of all, which can appear in winter or any other time, is not really a fungus. Or even a plant. Or animal…. at least not all the time. This “thing” is Slime Mould (pictured above). Let me explain the situation as it is currently understood…

To begin, slime moulds are invisible, single celled “animals”, burrowing about in your lawn or in leaf litter, munching their favourite food, bacteria. Some types, when they hear the mating call, form sex cells called zygotes which keep on dividing over and over but never separate, eventually forming a “plasmodium” which can grow up to a metre across! Fungus-like, it spreads over logs and lawns; animal like, as the protoplasm streams back and forth, it actually moves – turning up one day, clearing off somewhere new by the afternoon!

Other types of slime mould carry on their business as amoeba-eating bacteria until the food runs out, and then panic. Literally, sending “panic signals” into the environment, they gather all the locals together to form one, multi-celled mass, which will then co-ordinate itself into action, “walk” to a suitable site, and then start to act all fungal! They/it actually form(s) a fruiting body, some of the amoeba forming the structure (and sacrificing themselves in the common good – how advanced is that!), others becoming the spores of the next generation.

Slime moulds are still not fully understood (one type is believed to cause club-root in cabbages). It’s almost certain we haven’t found them all. Some can be eaten, but somehow that seems weird and unkind! The one in the picture is bright yellow, and might be the one used by witches to spoil milk in folklore. But I am content to leave them unidentified, mysterious and, frankly, mind-boggling. Good hunting!

© Margaret Lear, Bankfoot

www.plantswithpurpose.co.uk