A Day Coastal Foraging
Yesterday not letting heavy rain stop us we decided to go foraging for a years supply of rosehips, and whatever else we could find. Our local council has being kind enough to plant a copious supply of Japanese rosehips rosa rugosa on the coast road. These are large fat early fruiting hips. Most of our native hips are ready to harvest until late autumn. Rugosa is ready from early august through to October. There are generally a rotten mush by the time the first frost come, which is the harvesting time for our native sweet briar and dog rose.
We also near to the roses we found a large sack, that looked like it had blown away from the near by building site, then we found enough fungi to fill with. The first group of fungi were a small puff ball called meadow puffball lycoperdon pratense. and then huge quantity of agarics. I have being obsessed by mushrooms since I was geeky teenager. I will explain the principles of fungi id in another post. Basically fungi like every other living organism is categorised into family groups. Once you can recognise the family groups you can ID a particular specimen down to it species quite often. However I have gone for walks with the country recorder and experts will still disagree on specimen. There has also being a rapid change in the classification of some species, I personally have a bit of blank spot around tawny funnel caps. What was three species has become two, and the families have moved around.
The agaricaceae are reasonably small group of fungi of which none of them are deadly, the ones that cause vomiting and diarrhoea are easy to spot as they bruise yellow very quickly. So on seeing the pink young gills that turn dark nearly black and then checking there was no bruising, I knew even without knowing the exact species I had found tonight's dinner. Later at home when I had my books to hand I worked out it was agaricus bitorquis or pavement mushroom. It is cultivated, and as a dried fungi is high protein and provides a complete source of amino acids, and because wild food always has cooties these mushrooms contain vitamin b12 to boot as well as the most absorbable form of vitamin D.
The two rings on the stem is the feature of the mushroom in the middle that gets this down to it specific species. Pavement mushroom is salt tolerant and will grow through pavements. This was on compacted ground facing the sea. The dark chocolaty gills and robustness told me is part of the agaricaceae. The little hole the flesh on the big one cut in half is mushroom cootie, they are perfectly edible if a bit gross. But they are very difficult to avoid.
After with had filled the basket with rosehip the boxes with blackberries and filled a random clean builders sack with fungi, we strolled on down to the beach. This is sea buckthorn. Although this is a dune specialist, it is found inland on the sides of A roads where councils plant it to provide a salt resistant people and animal proof barrier beside busy roads. I have seen in on the M4 near reading and on the A50 Staffordshire. It grows really mean thorns, but it also grows some very strong tasting vitamin rich fruit. The seed yield a medical oil.
We also near to the roses we found a large sack, that looked like it had blown away from the near by building site, then we found enough fungi to fill with. The first group of fungi were a small puff ball called meadow puffball lycoperdon pratense. and then huge quantity of agarics. I have being obsessed by mushrooms since I was geeky teenager. I will explain the principles of fungi id in another post. Basically fungi like every other living organism is categorised into family groups. Once you can recognise the family groups you can ID a particular specimen down to it species quite often. However I have gone for walks with the country recorder and experts will still disagree on specimen. There has also being a rapid change in the classification of some species, I personally have a bit of blank spot around tawny funnel caps. What was three species has become two, and the families have moved around.
The agaricaceae are reasonably small group of fungi of which none of them are deadly, the ones that cause vomiting and diarrhoea are easy to spot as they bruise yellow very quickly. So on seeing the pink young gills that turn dark nearly black and then checking there was no bruising, I knew even without knowing the exact species I had found tonight's dinner. Later at home when I had my books to hand I worked out it was agaricus bitorquis or pavement mushroom. It is cultivated, and as a dried fungi is high protein and provides a complete source of amino acids, and because wild food always has cooties these mushrooms contain vitamin b12 to boot as well as the most absorbable form of vitamin D.
After with had filled the basket with rosehip the boxes with blackberries and filled a random clean builders sack with fungi, we strolled on down to the beach. This is sea buckthorn. Although this is a dune specialist, it is found inland on the sides of A roads where councils plant it to provide a salt resistant people and animal proof barrier beside busy roads. I have seen in on the M4 near reading and on the A50 Staffordshire. It grows really mean thorns, but it also grows some very strong tasting vitamin rich fruit. The seed yield a medical oil.
I stood on ants nest while harvesting so I had to run to the nearly empty welsh beach to strip off to my undercrackers. Luckly I was wearing my super hero ones so I just looked like I standing on beach in a bikini on windy day in the rain. Perfectly normal. I only wanted a small amount anyway.
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