Fascinating fungi don’t leave mushroom for error

TOLLYMORE Forest in Co Down is famous as one of the key film locations for Game of Thrones. Before it came to the attention of HBO Productions, it had inspired both CS Lewis and Edward Lear in their literary endeavours. According to local legend Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula, was a regular visitor — he married Florence Balcombe, a local woman from Newcastle, two miles distant.

Tollymore is certainly dramatic, and in places the great Douglas firs and the old Victorian ruins of barbicans and faux-hermitages create an atmosphere as foreboding as anything Transylvania has to offer. As it happens I was in Tollymore, not to seek artistic inspiration, nor even to gaze on the oak grove that provided the main staircase for the Titanic. I was actually on a fungus quest, run by local guide Bobby Quinn.

The conditions were ideal. Tollymore, sandwiched between the Mourne Mountains and Dundrum Bay is usually a very windy place.

And the wind is such an attention-seeker in these parts. But for my foraging foray, it was still, the forest was damp, and fungi abounded.

Heading into deep woodland we spotted a couple of dozen or so species from the 140,000 or so known fungi that inhabit these islands. Pride of place went to a bright orange, shiny specimen known as Velvet Shank. It’s also called enoki, the mushroom widely used in Japanese cuisine. I was about to fill my bag when Bobby issued a cautionary note — it can easily be confused with another fungus called Funeral Bell. I put my bag away and thought of this sneaky trick evolution has played on us — many edible fungi have another fungi, very similar, but devastatingly poisonous. But here’s a funny thing. In France if you take a fungus to any pharmacist they have to, by law, tell you whether it’s edible or not. Quite a responsibility. That same law doesn’t apply in Ireland. I know that’s hard to digest, but there it is.