Fungus Foray

Woodland walking, pleasant at any time of the year, can offer a bonus to the discerning Autumn rambler. A time of fiery red and brilliant yellow leaves, it is also the season when some of the more interesting of the three thousand or so species of larger British fungi are most likely to be seen.

Hidden amidst the leaf litter, or enjoying the dappled sunshine of a leafy glade, they are easily overlooked, however, unless a par­ticularly damp Summer has lingered on into a mild September and October. Then by a dramatic increase in size and abundance they make their presence known.

I can recall one such season in birch woods near Ashbridge in Hertfordshire, when I came upon a circle of Fly Agaric (Amanita virosa), each at least two feet tall, with red-spotted caps as many feet across. So striking to look at in fact, that I half expected a band of pixies to emerge from a grassy knoll behind me and take their seats.

They would have been wise not to nibble the upholstery had they done so though. The garish coloured species owes its common name to its thirteenth century role as a fly killer.

More common are the Russulas, which come in pur­ple, green, scarlet, yellow, cream and violet shades, some of which are edible, some of which, quite definitely are not. The apricot scented Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius), a delicious funnel shaped fungi found in mixed woodlands is yellow to orange apricot. The Wood Blewit (Lepista nuda), also extremely edible, is lilac to reddish violet in colour.

Puffballs, so named because they are cylindrical, and filled with millions of spores, which puff out like clouds of smoke if you touch them when they are ripe, come in various sizes. The largest reported specimen of the Giant puff­ball (Lycoperdon giganteum) was reputedly mistaken for a sheep when seen in New York State in 1877. A more normal size is about the circumference of a man's head though, again after a wet summer, I have seen them much bigger.

The slightly flattened while to yellowish spore mass has been claimed as a forerunner of the football, though its comparative fragility would seem to make that unlikely. Ripe spores were used by early physicians to cauterize wounds, however, and by country people for tinder both for kindling and to make smoke for handling bees. A young fungus is said to be delicious when divided into steaks and fried.

The Shaggy cap (Coprinus comatus) on the other hand, is better stewed or baked but only in its juvenile state. With age the tall, white, lawyers wig cap turns to an indigestible black, oily, consistency. Books usually give their habitat as grassland where soil has recently been disturbed, but whenever I have come upon it, the shaggy cap has been in clusters under trees on the fringes of light woodland.

     When eating this fungi it is a wise precaution to keep the wine bottle tightly corked as it con­tains a substance which reacts with alcohol in the body to cause nausea.

    No such problems with (Boletus edulis), which has a rich, toasted brown cap reminis­cent of a penny bun – its common name. Found predominately in the heavier shade of beech woods, it can be eaten fresh or used dried as seasoning.

A friend of mine who was incurably addicted to Boletes once got me to take her to woodlands near Maidstone where another friend had told her that they grew. I wasn't surprised when we came away empty handed though. Knowledge of such sites is generally too jealously guarded to be so easily passed on. Their whereabouts is the sort of secret an enthusiast is prepared to take with them to the grave.

Just as the Roman Emperor Claudius did with a few secrets of his own, though in his case not inten­tionally, and not ones concerning the where­abouts of certain larger fungi.  The fungus he was poisoned by is one which is extremely poisonous, but also fortunately, extremely rare in Britain, the Destroying Angel (Amanita virosa), which closely resembles young specimens of the Field Mushroom (Agraricus campestris) and has sometimes been eaten in mistake for them, with fatal results. I have only seen it once, several years ago, growing under birches in mixed woodland. Not the type of habitat from which I would expect to gather Field Mushrooms, yet it was only the white gills on the underside of the cap (mushrooms have grey, pink, or dark brown gills) and the volva at the base of the stem, which finally con­vinced me that here was a much more deadly species.

 Claudius was poisoned by it, not by accident, but by his wife, the Empress Agrippina, who prepared him a meal containing the fungus, when she felt that it was time for her son, Nero, to take over the throne. I have used the fungus and its properties in the plot of my latest murder mystery, available from Amazon Kindle as an e-book, The Body in the Woods.

Not that a fungus has to closely resemble a Mushroom for it to be eaten in mistake for one. Death Caps (Amanita phalloides), such as those I saw grow­ing under beeches near Cranleigh in Surrey, have greenish olive caps with white rings and gills, and a sickly sweet smell, yet are rep­resentative of a species accounting for ninety per cent of all fungus-induced deaths. Deaths which, in Britain at least, result from mistaken identity rather than experimentation.

A pity then that all fungi aren't as immedi­ately recognizable as Fly Agaric? Or a pity that more people don't take the time and trouble to learn to distinguish the different species for themselves?

Varying characteristics, habitats and seasons are, after all, as marked between fungi as they are between trees, grasses or orchids. It is only through observation that the separate identities of any of them begin to emerge.

 

                                                  

 

           

                                                            Destroying Angel fungus

 

 

 

 

Tree and earth oracles

The belief that certain trees contained a divine essence, for whatever reason, was one which was commonly held by ancient man. To prehistoric communities, already in awe of the natural phenomena of the world around them, it was no less believable that the rustlings and movements of the branches of a tree were caused by the god who dwelt within, than that the sun should fall out of sight every night, only to reappear on the opposite horizon the following dawn. When reputably wise men claimed to be able to interpret the meanings of those movements, the concept of natural oracles was born.

EARTH ORACLES

The earliest were the earth oracles, and the part played by natural fissures, springs and trees in the ceremonies connected with them grew from their closeness to the earth.

The most famous oracle of antiquity, at Delphi, was situated at the opening of a natural cleft of rock, believed at that time to be the centre of the earth, and was originally presided over by the great earth-mother Gaia. The shrine was later dedicated to Apollo - hence its association with the Laurel, Laurus nobilis, which once grew in the cleft, for, in the legend, the nymph Diane turned into a Laurel tree rather than succumb to the advances of the god.

Another famous oracle, that of Trophonius at Lebadea, near Mount Helicon in Boeotia, was modelled on the idea of descent into the underworld.

The antiquity of this conception is found in an account of the initiation of an angur on a Babylonian tablet now in the British Museum. He was made to descend into an artificial imitation of the lower world, where he beheld "altars amidst the waters, the treasures of Anu, Bel and Ea, the tablets of the gods, the delivery of the oracle of heaven and earth and the Cedar tree, the beloved of the great gods."

TREE ORACLES

Here tree and earth oracles are seen in conjunction, but tree divinity goes back still further than that. In a bilingual text of a much earlier date we are told of, "the cedar tree, the tree that shelters the power of the incubus, upon whose core is recorded the name of Ea" (the god of wisdom).

There are several allusions to oracular trees in the Bible. The Tree of Knowledge was obviously intended to be one, and the fact that God spoke to Moses from a burning bush could be taken to indicate as being fairly common the idea of trees as means of divine revelation. A holy tree near Shechem was called "the oak tree of the fortune tellers" in Judges 9:37 and "the sacred tree of Moreh" in Genesis 12:6 and Deuteronomy 11:30.

The prophetess Deborah gave her responses under a Palm near Bethel, which was said to be marking the grave of Rachel; and David, asking God for an indication of the right moment to attack the Philistines, received His sign in "the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees."

The oracle of the Pelasgic Zeus at Dodona in Epirus took the form of a very ancient tree contained within a sacred grove of Oaks. The responses of the deity who dwelt there were interpreted from the rustling of branches, the murmur of a sacred spring welling forth at its foot, or the drawing of oracle lots from an urn kept at the foot of it.

The origin of the practice is lost in the mists of time now, but it is known to have predated the dedication of the shrine to Zeus. Herodotus claims the authority of priestesses at Dodona and priests at Thebes for an account of the kidnapping by Phoenicians of two women from the temple at Thebes. Sold into separate slavery - one into Libya and the other into Greece - the women were obviously induced to give up the secret knowledge they had, for the concept of earth oracles followed them to their new homes.

The oracle of Zeus-ammon which was established in the Libyan desert was also vested in an ancient tree. That at Dodona was said to have lasted until the fourth century AD, when it was reputed to be two thousand years old. During the earlier period of its deification, it was frequently adorned with wreaths and fillets, a practice common in Egypt, where sacred trees such as Sycamore and Palm (Phoenix dactylifera) were also decorated in this way. Excavation at the site during the last century revealed lead tablets inscribed with questions addressed to the god by his votaries c. 400 BC.

THE DELPHIC ORACLE

Of all the oracles of the ancient world, however, none is better documented than that at Delphi.

According to legend, its properties were discovered when gas which emerged from a cleft in a regular stream caused convulsions in a number of goats grazing nearby. A goatherd who went to their rescue was also affected and went into a trance, during which he uttered words which were individually clear, but meaningless when strung together.

The prophet was always a woman - the Pythia. The earliest holders of the office were virgins of noble birth and good od appearance, but, after a Pythia had been seduced in the sacred cave, the qualifications were revised and subsequent incumbents were as old and unattractive as possible.

Consulting the Delphic oracle was an expensive business, usually beyond the pockets of the ordinary people. Once a year, however, the Pythia would leave the sanctuary and allow the poor to consult her on the temple steps, without any of the trimmings for which the richer people paid.

What the latter got for their money always began with the ritual purification of the Pythia, who was then escorted by priests to the chamber where the omphalos was situated. There a goat was sprinkled with holy water, and if it shivered in a prescribed fashion the auspices were considered favourable and the ritual was allowed to continue. Dressed in her sacred robe and crowned with Laurel, the Pythia would descend deep into the sanctuary, where she inhaled the vapours and chewed Bay leaves, to increase the hallucinogenic action. Then, as incense burned, the Pythia sat and awaited the visitation of the god, with a priest on hand to interpret the enigmatic message for the client who waited outside the sanctuary.

Delphi survived for at least eight hundred years, and the fact that its power eventually waned and its prophecies became inaccurate seems to argue that the opposite was once the case.

Even Cicero, who was a noted sceptic, said of Delphi that it could, "never have been so overwhelmed with so many important offerings from monarchs and nations if all the ages had not proved the truth of its oracles". The philosopher Heraclitus took a more jaundiced view, however, saying that, "the god of Delphi neither reveals nor conceals but hints", a charge later levelled at the similarly vague prophecies of Nostradamus.

The decline of the oracles set in by the second century AD. The Romans retained something of the idea, with a prophetic Ilex grove (Ilex aquifolium - the common Holly) on the Aventine Hill, sacred to Faunus and Picus, and a grove oracle dedicated to Faunus at Tibur, beside the Albumean Spring, but they lacked the reputation and the status of the earlier ones.

The oracle of Jupiter at Preneste harked back to an earlier period of history. Here oracle lots were fashioned from the wood of a sacred Oak, in a practice which was common throughout the ancient world, when Scythian soothsayers divined by the use of a number of rods which they placed on the ground, uttering predictions as they gathered them up again, one by one.

The oracular tradition was not to be preserved, however When the Emperor Julian the Apostate asked the Delphic oracle itself how it could be restored, he received its final pronouncement by way of reply. Its day was done and it would never be revived. Sadly it proved to be the most accurate prophecy of all.

If you want to know more why not buy a copy of Brian W Taylor's  e-book  Sacred plants of the world from Neolithic times until the present day - how and why they've been worshipped - or its hardback version - Gardens of the Gods. Recently given five stars by a satisfied reader.

Broad Bean Folklore

      A bright and sunny, but chilly day in Shropshire, as the cold nights continue to deter a lot of the seed I’ve sown in the garden from germinating.

       Not all the seeds though, because one plant which does seem to have a higher than usual ratio of germination to seeds sown than usual is the broad bean. And that’s a pity in some ways.

       When sowing my broad beans I followed the maxims laid down in the old rhymes associated with broad beans, which say that on St Valentines Day, they should be in the clay; that you should sow far more seeds than you need for the number of plants you hope to get – one to rot and one to grow, one for the pigeon and one for the crow – and that if you sow broad beans in the mud, they’ll grow like wood. Though that only actually rhymes if you come from north of Watford.

        What there wasn’t a rhyme to tell me, unfortunately, was what to do if a lot of plugs of broad beans you ordered from a leading nursery back before Christmas, and then forgot about, turn up after the seeds you’ve sown are in the ground.

       Try to avoid my garden when so many beans are in flower is one they ought to do a rhyme about, perhaps, especially at night, because there is an old superstition, known in some parts of the country, which says that a field of broad beans in full flower has a scent which can cause such a quickening of a person’s breathing and heartbeat, and arouse such a general feeling of excitement bordering on intoxication in them if breathed  in too deeply, that someone sleeping amongst them through the night can be driven to madness by morning.

      In the garden, perhaps not at night if it can be avoided. Trying not to breathe too deeply of any broad bean flowers there may be around. Look out for Cornus nuttallii, the Mountain Dogwood, or Pacific Dogwood, a deciduous, conical tree, which has large white bracts surrounding tiny flowers in late spring, and foliage that turns yellow, or occasionally red, in autumn.

                              

Battlefield Phantoms

Visions are often seen in times of war. The Phantom Sentry of Ypres is a typical case and is one of many such stories related by men who faced death on an appalling scale during World War One.

The incident happened one particularly dark night when an ambulance was taking it badly wounded soldier to a hospital in Poperinghe. Suddenly, on a deserted stretch of the road the driver saw his path was blocked by the glowing, ghost-like figure of a British sentry. The driver braked hard bringing the ambulance to a halt only inches short of the man in the road. But when the driver got out he found the sentry had vanished into thin air. What the driver saw next was even more alarming for there, only a few feet in front of his vehicle, was a deep shell crater; to have plunged into it would have meant certain death. Without doubt the Phan­tom Sentry had saved two lives but there were other ghost soldiers whose appear­ance gave hundreds of men on the battlefield courage and hope.

I n September 1914, the London Evening News reported that ancient bowmen led by St George had appeared in no-man's-land at Mons in France. The warriors, all dressed in shining armour and mounted on magnificent white horses, had charged the enemy lines and driven the Germans back with arrows and swords.

Even before the published story reached the front-line, troops on both sides swore they had seen the ghostly horsemen. Others said they had seen a single angel moving among the wounded and the dying and so the legend of the Angels of Mons was born. During the First World War not all ghosts appeared on the battlefield. According to some reports a British soldier called Harry Kirkup had a strange encounter which was to haunt him for years.

Kirkup, then a sergeant in a northern regiment was a complete sceptic, not to say cynic when it came to believing in ghosts but on this particular night he was to change his mind. Evidently there was a thick fog in Newcastle and Kirkup had got lost trying to get to Central Station. Just when he had given up all hope of catching his train he saw another soldier appear out of the gloom. The stranger told Kirkup he was on his way to the station and would guide him there. As they walked Harry noticed the stranger's uniform was of the kind worn in the South African War, now some 16 years past, and he became slightly alarmed when the stranger said he was returning to his unit. Still, there was nothing really sinister about the man so when they arrived at the station and he suggested they share a compartment for the journey to London, Kirkup agreed. The train moved off and the stranger became very talkative.

He explained to Harry that this particu­lar night was similar to the one 18 years ago, in 1899, when he was travelling back to his unit in London. The only other person travelling in the compartment on that particular occasion was a thin, bony-faced man dressed in an ill-fitting black suit who for all the world looked like an undertaker.

Although Kirkup was amazed the stran­ger could recollect the events of a night 18 years ago in such detail he did not interrupt the story. The stranger con­tinued by telling Harry he felt ill at ease with the man in black and as he reached into his pocket for a cigarette hoping that a smoke would keep him awake, he inadvertently pulled out his wallet con­taining a month's pay which spilled onto the floor.

As the stranger gathered up the money he was aware of the man opposite watching his every move. Not long afterwards the stranger felt himself dropping off to sleep but a sixth sense made him wake up. The man in black had drawn a knife and was lunging it at him. The two men fought savagely the stranger said, however the man in black was too strong for him and raised the knife for the lethal blow.

Kirkup said the stranger was lucky the knife had missed a vital spot, to which the stranger replied it had not, the knife was driven through his heart and it killed him. Before the startled, disbelieving Harry could reply, the South African War soldier disappeared. Harry Kirkup continued his journey to London alone and never saw the stranger again.

Phantom soldier stories like the Kirkup one are open to conjecture simply because there is only a single witness to the event whereas others such as the Lost Battalion of Hill 60 and the Maginot Ghost Army defy explanation, especially as so many other men actually saw both events close to hand. Hill 60 was a key landmark in the Gallipoli campaign in the Dar­danelles in 1915. A year earlier the Turks had entered the war on Germany's side and twelve months later a force of Commonwealth and French troops landed at the Gallipoli Peninsula as part of a bold plan of attack. The idea was to seize the Dardanelles, a narrow straight joining the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara, knock Turkey out of the war and open a supply route to Russia.

On 12th August 1915, the First-Fifth Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment were ordered to advance on Hill 60 in Sulva Bay. As the men moved up the hill they had to pass through some thick, low clouds and it was at this point that the whole regiment disappeared. Months later the decomposing bodies of less than half of the men were found but the fate of their comrades was not known. These men were posted as missing in action and after the war came to an end the British authorities, thinking the Turks may have taken them prisoner, asked for whatever remained of the Regiment to be returned. The Turks denied all knowledge of the events on Hill 60 saying they had made no contact whatsoever with First-Fifth Norfolks. The incident seemed closed, then 50 years later three witnesses, F Reichardt, R Newnes and J L Newan made a startling statement about the missing men.

The witnesses were veterans of the New Zealand field company involved in the campaign. From their vantage point overlooking Hill 60 the three men had seen a strange formation of six or eight big clouds hovering 500ft above the ground. Each cloud they said was shaped like a loaf of bread. Below these was another cloud about 245m long, 60m wide and 65m high. It was similar in shape and was resting on the ground where it straddled a dry creek-bed. According to the New Zealanders, the First-Fifth Battalion marched up the hill and into the lower cloud without hesitation. When the last trooper had entered it the cloud slowly lifted into the air where it joined the other formation and drifted off to the north. Hill 60 was deserted, no living soul could be seen.

The New Zealanders' statement came in for much controversy especially as the Allies had attacked Hill 60 in force nine days later (on 21 August 1915) in heavy mist and were virtually wiped out in the battle. Reichardt and his comrades were accused of confusing the dates and sequence of events and were also ridiculed for waiting until 1965 before telling their strange story. It is unlikely the riddle of the missing battalion will ever be solved.

Stories relating to the Maginot Ghost Army are a complete contrast to the incident on Hill 60 for two main reasons. First, they concern an army which was never reported to be missing in action and secondly, tales of French ghost soldiers did not begin until 1973. The Maginot Line was a massive fortification system built by the French to check an invasion by Nazi Germany. Basically the system contained machine gun emplace­ments, underground barracks, hospitals and its own railway to transport the troops from one point to another. Built at the staggering cost of 230 million this concrete structure ran along the whole of the eastern frontier of France, from Belgium to Switzerland.

After the war the fortifications were abandoned and lay silent for years then, in 1973, for no apparent reason they became active again. It all started when two spinsters, Marie and Brigitte Larousse who lived near the derelict emplacements, heard heavy lorries and the sound of marching troops. When the sisters could find no sign of military activity in the area they became distres­sed and reported the matter to the commander of the local garrison who said there had been no recent troop move­ments in that region. The mystery deepened when a farm worker, Pierre Chalmain, insisted he had observed a battalion of French soldiers in World War Two uniforms digging trenches near one of the blockhouses. Chalmain went back a week later but there was no sign of the soldiers and the ground around the blockhouse appeared to be untouched.

Perhaps the most chilling story about the French ghost soldiers came from an  insurance salesman named Charles Bonet. He claimed he was driving from Metz to Luxembourg when his car broke down and while waiting for a repair truck he decided to listen to the radio. Suddenly the programme he was tuned in to was interrupted by the voices of army officers discussing an underground ammunition store. Moments later Bonet heard the voice of General Maxine Weygand who was a member of the Vichy Government in 1940 and also Chief of the General Staff. Weygand was announcing that the Maginot Line was to be aban­doned as part of the French withdrawal from the advancing German Army. Bonet was stunned to say the least for Weygand had died in 1965 and on checking, the

Japanese infantry and all but six of the Americans were killed. Evidently the remaining men were captured then brutally tortured to death. Soon after the incident, natives and Allied troops reported seeing six American soldiers patrolling the jungle in the area of the massacre. The men, who all appeared gaunt, pale and battle weary, would vanish into thin air when approached. Rumours of the ghost patrol soon spread. Stories began to filter through to the Allies that the ghost Marauders had killed many of the Japanese responsible for the ambush and that the other Nippon troops had committed harakiri sooner than face being hunted down.

Christiansen knew little about the Marauders. They were far from his mind when he sat down to rest in the jungle near Maingkwan in May 1957. Therefore, he was paralysed with fear when six ragged, armed men came out of the undergrowth towards him. They didn't speak to the missionary but motioned him to lay down and tied his hands behind his back. Shortly after he passed out. When he awoke hours later his hands had been cut free and the Marauders had gone. Christiansen truly believed he had been dreaming but when he arrived at Maing- kwan the villagers said the ghost patrol had been seen twice that day.

Belief in ghosts does not apply only to the common soldier or the civilian. During World War Two, Air Chief Marshall Dowding had the responsibility of sending young RAF pilots to face the onslaught of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Many of them were to perish but Dowding refused to believe that death was final. During the war he said of his missing pilots ‘Don’t think of them as dead…..they are very much alive and active…I look forward to giving the evidence on which I base my belief.’

If you are looking at this you must be interested in ghosts, so why not read my three ghost stories available on Amazon as e-books or paperbacks.

Why Weeps the Willow - The north Norfolk coast in the autumn of 1917. A restless ghost searches for a means of experiencing physical love again. A teenage girl tries to find her way through the pitfalls of a first emotional encounter. A ruthless woman determines to hold on to her family's estates in the face of all adversity.  A soldier is invalided home from the battlefields of France, suffering from amnesia. Add incest, espionage and murder, then look for the answer to the question posed on a suicide's grave. Why Weeps the Willow?

Let Sleeping Evils Lie – a midnight vigil in a churchyard by students trying to contact a ghost said to haunt it, and some impromptu dabbling with an Ouija board in a youth club a few days later, awaken a sleeping evil it would have been better to leave undisturbed. 

Murder out of Memory - A compelling tale of love and murder, told by the ghosts of the two people involved. Or were they ghosts?  Even after battling to put right the grave miscarriage of justice he’d discovered had followed the murder, Peter was still not completely sure about that.

 

Uses for Hazel in the garden

     A cold day in Shropshire, and I’ve come indoors away from the sleet and snow falling steadily outside.

   I’d been using the thinner, more pliable, stems I’d cut from the old coppice hazel in the corner of the garden, pushing them into the ground around the herbaceous plants in the borders, to support them when they come through. Something I do every three years or so. Some of the stems will also be holding up my broad beans later in the year.

   Staking herbaceous borders in that way used to be one of the more labour intensive jobs in a park in those long ago days when local authorities had direct labour to use intensively, and parks to use them in. Hazel was always the best shrub for the purpose, because it’s strong, but pliable. Sometimes we’d use lime tree stems instead. But they were never as sturdy.

   There had been a lot of lime trees planted along the pavements of the streets in the town where I grew up. Every year, on a rotation, a number of them would have had their crowns reduced by the council’s forestry section and the resulting prunings taken to local allotments to be used as pea and bean sticks by the plot holders. These days I expect the cuttings are shredded in a machine towed behind the lorry and turned into sawdust instead.

   The fibrous outer bark of lime trees used to be used by gardeners for tying bundles and was known as bass or bast. The thicker stems of hazel, below the bits used to support plants, were used as a source of small poles; wattling for hurdles, fences and huts; hoops for casks; for making walking sticks; and as rods for driving cattle. Most of which uses have no place in the modern world.

   In the garden, not needing to be supported by anything, look out for Exochorda x macrantha ‘The Bride’. For about six weeks during April and May its arching branches are wreathed in a cloud of open, white flowers, whilst in autumn, its soft, green leaves turn delicate shades of yellow and orange.