How to ID fungus course

Matt Rich

Ranger, Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

Fungi are one of the strangest and oldest parts of the natural world. You could study fungi your whole life and still have plenty to learn about these amazing... plants? … animals?

No. Fungi are in fact their own thing. An amazing kingdom that has integrated and interwoven itself into the natural world helping it survive and thrive, by being the highway for information and resources shared throughout a forest. With so much potential to help with so many human problems from cancer treatments, to removing plastic from nature.

What we typically see are just the fruiting bodies of fungi. Autumn is a great time of year to enjoy the shapes, sizes, colours and smells. If this is something that intrigues you, but you don’t have three years to spare to delve into the fungus kingdom, Martin Allison’s one day course is a great way to get started or continue learning. With a decade of knowledge and experience, and a clear joy in sharing this with others, Martin is the perfect guide into the world of fungi.

I went on my first course with Martin this year and it was lovely to see people on their third, fourth or fifth time and still learning.

We started with a short walk into the woods and didn’t take long, maybe 10 steps, before we spotted our first fungus, so no need to be super fit to go looking for fungus, just the right habitat. We found around 30 species. Some we could ID in place, a few needed to be taken away to be looked at under a microscope later.

In common with many of Sussex Wildlife Trust’s reserves, Ebernoe Common is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and also a National Nature Reserve (NNR). Martin Allison has special permission to collect fungi for survey and recording purposes at this site – and is mindful to keep the impact to a minimum. We ask other visitors to this site to enjoy the fungi in situ and without picking.

One of the mushrooms we identified was the Garlic Parachute (main blog image), a medium size mushroom with a black stem and whitish top, and as the name suggests, the smell of garlic is present when walking near a cluster.

Wax caps are another group of fungi that we also looked at, needing undisturbed and unfertilised soil. These colourful, shiny fungi are becoming rarer in the UK.