J'AIME NOVEMBER 2020

CHICKEN OF THE WOODS,
PHOTOGRAPHED BY
DUNCAN COLEMAN.
“People are noticing more about the natural world
because it’s become quite important for stress relief
to get outside the home. We wouldn’t necessarily
have been doing that before COVID-19.
“Now people are using the outdoors for recreation
more and more they’re noticing the little things that
may have been there all along but gone unseen.
“I don’t think this year is a particularly good fruiting
year overall, although individual species like different
conditions.”
Species that Duncan has come across in Staffordshire
include curry scented milk caps, which smell like
curry and contain a milky substance if a small piece
is broken off.
He’s also found giant puffball mushrooms, which can
grow as large as beachballs. He says it’s hard to go
out looking for them - you just stumble across them
by accident.
You may really need to keep your eyes peeled when
out mushroom spotting on your daily walk though as
Duncan says some varieties can shoot up within one
day and then be gone just three or four days later.
Rather than foraging for mushrooms, Duncan
recommends people literally grow and pick their own
by introducing carefully selected species of fungi into
their own garden.
“You can buy infused shitake logs or dowel rods with
spores on them. That way you can grow your own
crop - you’ve put them in there so you know what
you’re picking. I have king oyster mushrooms and
chicken of the woods growing in my back garden.”
He says chicken of the woods tastes so like meat that
last year he turned some into a mushroom version of
KFC.
He may advise people against doing it, but if you’re
intent on foraging for mushrooms then Duncan
says you should always make sure you seek the
landowner’s permission first and should check out
any local by-laws put in place to stop foraging.
“It’s always a good rule of thumb that if you find a
group of mushrooms you shouldn’t take more than
a third of them,” he says. “Leave plenty behind for
nature as they’re a valuable food sourse for slugs and
small mammals.”
Duncan stresses that you need to be 100 percent
certain that you know what you’re picking before you
pick it, preferably by doing some sort of training.
“Even if you’ve picked something that you know is
an edible species, only try a small amount of it at
first, because people have different immune systems
and allergies.”
He says that most mushrooms you’ll come across
while you’re out walking wouldn’t taste very nice, but
there are a handful of species that will kill you if you
eat them.
“There’s the Deathcap and the Destroying Angel -
the names pretty much say everything you need to
know about them.
“The Deathcap mushroom leads to a particularly
cruel death as people suffer incredibly but then get
better before their organs go into failure.
“There’s nothing that medical science can do about
either of those mushrooms.”
Duncan says statistically it isn’t children who tend to
be poisoned by mushrooms, it’s adults who haven’t
identified the type correctly or who have eaten lots of
mushrooms that don’t agree with their body in one
sitting.
But he says he does understand the allure of foraging
in the days of food accountability, where we like to
be able to know where our food comes from.
* In his role with Staffordshire Wildlife Trust Duncan
delivers accredited forest school courses and provides
forest school programmes for schools and other
clients.
DUNCAN COLEMAN
WITH A GIANT PUFFBALL
MUSHROOM.
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