MYCOLOGY

I wrote this a while back for one of the zines that we produced. Now web-ulized for distant readers:

Three recent forest foragings:

1) End of August: Trent Park, London, UK
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Smallest fruit body of a fungus found: 5mm
Largest fruit body: 300mm
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In other words, a factor of 60 in linear dimensions. Just one reason to be thrilled by mushrooms. Run, don't walk to your nearest birch forest, where you are liable to find mushrooms and trees engaged in a symbiotic relationship - the tree providing sugar from photosynthesis, the mushroom nutrients leached from microscopic pores in the earth via its mycorrhiza ("mushroom root") - just like little communists, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. The mushrooms also absorb and therefore filter out heavy metals and toxins that could harm the tree; this is why you should not eat too many mushrooms from the Chernobyl region of Ukraine, even today.
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Colours of mushroom found:
purple, brown, orange, white, yellow (luminescent)
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2) Late September: Trukhaniv Island, Kiev, Ukraine
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This island sits in the broad low Dnieper River and is accessed by a slightly shabby concrete footbridge. Penetrating beyond the ice-cream huts, winding down as the summer ends, there is an old pleasure bar, unused, now a jolly and grotty pavilion for teenagers and stray dogs to explore. We were told of - but did not see - packs of stray dogs that roam the island, numbering in the low hundreds.

Going further, further past a stagnant inlet where a strange figure loomed in the stinky marsh, there were signs warning against the bite of the tick, which did nothing to slow us.

After half and hour of increasingly grinding walking or shuffling (the sun was out), we realised that walking slowly is more tiring so we puffed out our chests and swung our arms like hikers. The road stretches long before you, each corner reveals a new distant horizon. By the side of the road in young forest are a few dozen fly agaric toadstools. Some are quite fresh, their caps still perfect little spheres, like little red purulent planets. Seeing these, we decided to turn back.


3) Last day of September: Grunewald Forest, Berlin, Germany
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We arrived in the forest at about seven AM. After the Second World War, the allies built a hill here using rubble from bombings; it's called Teufelsberg - Devil's Mountain. At the peak they grew a cluster of enormous puffball funghi, a spying station of white-canvased geodesic domes.


Walking through the forest before anyone else, we found mushrooms at every step, starting with a foot high white specimen. Some species huddle together like herd animals, some are interspersed more sparsely, some go it alone. There were shrooms which glowed slightly with bioluminescence or just the morning light, or at least they tricked my eyes, and there were many edible boletes with their characteristic spongy caps.

Past a square of tightly packed allotment-summer house arrangements, up the hill, gaining and losing sight of the geodesics. We exceeded the fence of the Cold War compound and tramped through the dank and up. The view from the tallest radio tower: the sun was low and shining straight at us. A 360-degree view of any city makes it look like lego - here is the airport at Tegel, here is the sports stadium from Albert Speer, several tall masts, one of which must be Alexanderplatz. Berlin seemed to be rather surrounded by forests, unlike London, which is surrounded by more London.

Since it was stripped out when the Americans left, you can only wonder what the radio interception antennae looked like. They must not have been very aerodynamic since they were protected from the wind by these domes. The one at the peak is just more than a hemisphere of fullerene, say 8m radius. Clap your hands and the distinct echos continue for ten seconds, the diffuse reverb for twenty.

By the time we came down from the towers and the mountain, school kids and Russians were digging around for mycology. The mushrooms that were so dewy and vibrating when we arrived were drier and a bit more withdrawn.

Folk Names of Mushrooms
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The Sickener
The Blusher
Slimy Milk Cap
Destroying Angel
The Deceiver
Velvet Shank
Bleeding Bonnet
Cramp Balls


Concerning the Film "Shrooms"
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The horror movie "Shrooms" (tag-line: Blair Witch on acid) is about a Very Upsetting Camping Trip in which annoying American kids go to Ireland to take magic mushrooms, but they take the wrong magic mushrooms, and they all die. It portrays Irish people as shiftless and inbred. “Shrooms” was funded by the Irish Film Board. If you wish to see this film, please contact us and we will lend it to you. Please do not buy this film.

15th meeting - Come modify some wood

The form of wood, for instance, is altered if a table is made out of it. Nevertheless the table continues to be wood, an ordinary sensible thing. But as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing that transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were dancing of its own free will.

- Karl Marx,

from 'the Fetish Character of the Commodity and its Secret' , Capital, 1873

Marx is known to have relaxed from his activities in economics and philosophy by solving problems from differential calculus. At BTWC 15, we suggest relaxation not with the swooping and turning infinitesimals of calculus, but the flowing and streamlined wood grain.

Fish by Nick.

Pip´s stuff


Little Jack made a lady hugging a horse.

Trent Park

A couple of us decided to take a trip out to a forest to try some green wood whittling. During the seasoning (drying) process (which may take some years for large logs), wood loses around 40% of its mass as water leaves the fibres, leaving the wood stable and unlikely to crack or warp too much when it is finally used. Before this has occurred, the wood is called green. Green wood is usually much softer and is frequently used for carving smaller or disposable objects where stability over time is not important.

We settled on Trent Park in North London and as we arrived and started to make our way through the oak-woods we decided to penetrate the forest beyond the designated paths. Our explorative spirit brought us to crawling through dense vegetation of fern and nettles for ten minutes before we gave up and made our way back to the trails.

Most of the fallen wood in the forest was in a semi-disintegrated state and so totally unsuitable for whittling but were on the other hand a perfect growing ground for mushrooms. We were instantly mesmerized by the fungi life-form and abandoned our search for wood in favor of the bizarre and diverse species of mushrooms.

We came across a great many different types. Slimy, dry, miniature and some that looked like an exploded alien. The most useful mushroom for a whittler is probably the birch bracket (also known as razor strop fungus) which - sliced and dried - can be used to get a really fine edge when honing of a knife.

Characteristic spongy cap of the bolete family of mushrooms

As we strolled out of the woodlands and onto the open fields, we came across a dislocated limb from an oak-tree that Jack cut up with the foldable saw. The wood was very damp and quite hard, but we still managed to carve some odd spoons.

On the way home, we drove past the 1930s Piccadilly Line extension's beautiful stations at Southgate, Oakwood, etc., built in a kind of English garden city-Bauhaus-Stijl, geometric fundaments and elegant window frames.

Log Cake

This is a chocolate log-cake with clusters of mushrooms made by Jana & Jack for Maeve on her birthday. 

It is not unusual for different species of fungi to live in symbiosis with trees, protecting them from disease and parasites. Other forms of mushrooms like Armillaria ostoyae, a genus of the Honey mushroom, are on the other hand directly harmful as they draw water and carbohydrates from the tree which eventually rots. Unlike most parasites the Honey fungus does not need to keep its host alive to thrive on it so it has a highly destructive impact once a colony is established. As if that was not scary enough, a colony that consists of a single-individual of the Armillaria ostoyae in the Strawberry Mountains in Oregon, USA, is supposedly the largest living organism in the world. It spans 8.9 square kilometers and is estimated to be 2,400 years old with a total mass of 605 tons.

 Real Honey Fungus