Richard Fortey takes us on a journey to meet luminous brackets, stinkhorns & stranglers, & other bizarre, wonderful mushrooms & toadstools, from the ugliest & strangest species to the beautiful silky rosegill. A celebration of fungi in all their different roles, in the natural world & our own lives.
Richard Fortey in our Panelled Room by Poppy Berry (poppyberry.com)
Grateful thanks to Richard Fortey OBE FRS FRSL who came to The Bookshop to give us a close encounter with nature - fungi in particular.
Richard is one of the UK’s leading palaeontologists (the study of ancient life, from dinosaurs to prehistoric plants, mammals, fish, insects and fungi), and is recently retired from the Natural History Museum. Natural History, he told us, is learning how to look carefully and closely at things, to be curious, and his lifetime development of these skills is recounted in his autobiography, A Curious Boy. Although his career was spent working as a palaeontologist his passion for fungi has been ‘my pleasure and perplexity for more than sixty years’. Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind, published this week, is the culmination of this passion and we were fortunate indeed that he visited The Bookshop to share some of his knowledge and enthusiasm.
A prolific writer (this is his twelfth book) Fortey told us that the difficulty in writing a book is knowing where to start. This one begins with the Borgo Val di Taro, an annual Italian Porcini Festival where porcini are found piled high on market stalls and on delicious restaurant dishes. For hundreds of years abundant quantities of porcini have grown in nearby woods, collected in hand woven baskets by the locals. Although there is some debate in the mushroom world as to whether mushrooms can be over-picked, this is some evidence that some mushrooms will just keep giving.
As well as showing us pictures of the more common mushrooms (fungi you can eat) and toadstools (fungi you don’t want to eat) and describing where they are found and their role in nature, we were also introduced to some of the more exotic species, such as the luminous Omphalotus nidiformus and the alien-like Red Cage Fungus. The fungal kingdom, says Fortey, is at least equal in size to the plant and animal kingdoms (if you forget the Beetles!), with new discoveries being made all the time. More, it is not only an equal kingdom but boasts the largest known living organism in the world, a fungi found in Oregon whose underground spread is larger and heavier than a blue whale.
Fungi’s primary role in nature is to “break stuff down”, they are ‘nature’s recyclers’ getting rid of fallen branches and leaves. Using photographs from his four acres of woodland in the Chiltern Hills, bought in 2011 and described in The Wood for the Trees, Fortey showed us the process of this breakdown from Turkey Tail mushrooms growing on the side of fallen branches, to the white patches of fungal growth you find on the underside. Fungi are also collaborators, taking sugar from the trees photosynthesis process and giving back a wealth of nutrients including water and iron via massive underground systems, whose depth and spread we are only just beginning to understand.
This was a fascinating evening, filled with Richard Fortey’s natural humour and erudite observations. Attendees queued up to take their signed copies of Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind home with them and, as with all the best Bookshop events, the conversations will continue for some time to come.
‘a beautiful, witty writer with a magpie eye for a good yarn and a rigorous scientiest’.
Helen Browne, The Spectator
September 19th 2024, Sackville College
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