Review of 2011 mushroom season.

2011 was the strangest year for fungi that I can remember.  This was largely the result of the strangest autumn weather I can remember, which provided us with an real-world experiment into the fruiting habits of various sorts of mushroom.   The start of September was disappointing (though not disastrous).  There was little sign of many of the boletes that are usually getting going by that time, although certain species such as Boletus pulverulentus (Inkstain Bolete) did better than usual, at least in my neck of the woods.

(Inkstain Bolete - so called for rather obvious reasons.)

As September progressed with no significant rainfall, the mushrooms became harder to find.  Then at the start of October, just as you'd expect the temperatures to tumble and the rain to set in, we had a week of the sort of weather you normally expect in a good July or August.  By the middle of October I had given up on the mushrooms for 2011.  I had to start postponing or cancelling my foraging sessions for fear of sending the customers home with nothing at all, and I even had to turn down a session with the BBC for the same reason.  It wasn't just the edible varieties - there were practically no fungi at all to be found apart from the woody, perennial species that are always present.   It was only by the middle of November, by which time the hot weather had subsided and we'd had a few decent showers of rain, that the mushrooms decided to make a return. 

And it was worth the wait.  Some groups of fungi never recovered - it was a pretty bad year all round for the russulas, for example.  But a lot of the species which had been absent up until that point started fruiting in abundance, including those belonging to groups which are usually finished by then.  All the common members of the genus agaricus (shop and field mushroom relatives) had a second fruiting, and a big one at that.  I've never seen so many Horse Mushrooms (A. arvensis).   The boletes also arrived, only six weeks after they normally do.  Suddenly there were Penny Buns (B. edulis) all over the place.   The usually-very-common Bay Bolete (B. badius) did not recover at all, so I'm expecting loads of those next year.  At the same time as these species which would normally have fruited earlier, many of the normal late-season specialists had a very good November.  The Clitocybes in particular went crazy, with edible Wood Blewitts (C. nuda) and Trooping Funnel (C. geotropa) very abundant and Clouded Funnel (C. nebularis) trying even harder than usual to take over most of the British countryside. The peak of mushroom season 2011 ended up being mid- to late-November, with plenty still to be found well into December.  I was particular pleased to find (in several locations) one of the late-season species I've never previously eaten.  This photo of  The Goblet (Pseudoclitocybe cyathiformis) was taken on December 7th:



My problem at that point was that I didn't have any customers, since they'd all decided that 2011 was going to be a write-off for mushrooms.  It seemed a shame to let them go to waste, so I found myself questioning my previous reluctance to sell some of the more abundant species to my local gastro-pub.   The Wood Blewitts were particularly popular, I was subsequently told.

The unusual weather has continued into 2012.   Down here on the south coast we are yet to experience the first serious frost of the year.  As I write this on January 7th, I'm yet to see anyone post a picture of Velvet Shanks (Flammulina velutipes), so it looks like the winter species haven’t decided it is winter yet.   I've been looking around my local area for the other major winter edible (Jew's Ear), and I haven't been able to find any of that either.   Tulips and daffodils have started to come up, and I'm hearing reports about amphibians and reptiles which haven't hibernated yet (or have woken early.)   For their sake at least, I hope we are not about to be plunged into a deep freeze of the sort we've recently come to expect. 

Geoff