The legend behind the bizarre name for King Alfred’s Cakes fungus
The kingdom of fungi has captivated humankind for centuries. In a realm with some truly strange names, King Alfred’s Cakes (Daldinia concentrica) stands out as one of the most bizarre.
The highly distinctive fruiting bodies of this fungus can be seen year round, firmly attached to the surface of dead wood and looking very much like lumps of charcoal – giving them the alternative name of coal fungus.
They get darker as they get older and display an overwhelming preference for the dead and decaying wood of ash.
Smaller forms may be found on beech and birch, particularly after heathland fires in the case of birch. Of course, with the continuing decline of ash across Britain owing to dieback, this fungus will certainly have an abundance of suitable habitat.
The Latin name refers to the concentric black and silver growth rings inside the shell, or stroma. Much like the growth rings in a tree, each represents a season’s growth and shows just how many years that King Alfred’s Cakes may survive.
The common name, however, relates to something very different. King Alfred, or Alfred the Great, lived in the ninth century. The story goes that Alfred was in hiding from the Viking hordes who were ravishing parts of Britain. On the run, he took refuge in the homestead of a peasant and agreed to keep an eye on the cakes she was baking. Alas, he dozed off and allowed them to burn. To escape embarrassment, he scattered them amongst the forest to hide his mistake, and the rest is very much history. They certainly have the appearance of cremated dough.
King Alfred’s Cakes are also known as cramp balls for their perceived assistance in preventing the onset of cramp.
Perhaps, more usefully, they’ve long been used as tinder for starting fires as they burn particularly slowly, though with a truly noxious smoke. Their value to the environment is far more significant as they provide a useful home and food for a range of invertebrates, but perhaps most importantly of all they accelerate the decomposition that helps return vital nutrients to the soil.
For wildlife information and advice, contact the Sussex Wildlife Trust’s WildCall service: 01273 494777 (weekday mornings) or wildcall@sussexwt.org.uk JAMES DUNCAN
Communities and wildlife officer at the Sussex Wildlife Trust felt compelled to furnish me with that piece of not-so-vital information because they assumed that my incongruous accent meant that I had been used to digging my way out of my frozen garden each morning before embarking on a six-mile hike to work down the pit. The truth is that I can count on one hand the number of decent snowfalls that I have experienced in my four-and-a-half decades. Even during the many years that I lived in places where tea was something you ate rather than drank, I missed out on the kind of snow that meant that kids would miss weeks of school, simply because they couldn’t get there.
Growing up, I was horribly jealous of friends who lived in the foothills of the Pennines, a place that proudly boasted permanent ‘road closed due to snow’ signs, while we were lucky to get more than the occasional dusting where I grew up in South Manchester. This horribly childish sense of resentment has lived with me ever since and is not helped by social media updates from my friends in the North who cannot contain themselves whenever the white stuff appears overnight. The shiny new sledge we optimistically bought three years ago has yet to see any meaningful action and is currently buried deep in the abyss that we call a shed. In a year that we’d all rather forget I think it would be hugely fitting if I was able to help our youngest build his first ever snowman – I’m not talking about anything flashy like a replica of the Death Star, just a simple snowman with a carrot for a nose and two small pebbles for eyes, as I’ve not seen a lump of coal since 1989.
I don’t think many people would mind too much if heavy snowfall was a thing in my corner of the world this year due to the fact that it won’t really matter if trains are cancelled as a result. It is pretty much all I will wish for this winter.