Fungi!

Last autumn when we moved to Wern Gate, amongst all the excitement of starting out on this adventure were mushrooms! Everywhere!

Fly Agaric

First thing on my mind was can we go skipping through the fields with a wicker basket collecting as many as we can with the hopes of lowering the carbon footprint of a nice wild mushroom risotto, I mean surely you cant get any more wild than this. But then realization kicked in and I remembered I have no idea what I'm doing, the only experience I have with mushrooms is in the mushroom kingdom helping me on my way to defeating Bowser.

While doubling in size or getting a power boost from eating one would be great, I thought I better do a bit of research.

Online resources were a bit hit and miss and a book I was given was amazing except for the obvious lack of a search feature (there are an enormous amount of fungi in the UK!)

By far the best tool I have found so far in trying to identify mushrooms has been a great little app from Google, Lens. Point your phone camera at a mushroom, take picture then let google search for matches in the big wild internet, and about 9 times out of 10 I am fairly confident the mushrooms have been identified.

Even with said confidence in identification, being the novice I am in this field I'm still very nervous about eating any of these so for the time being that carbon footprint will be staying where it is and I'll just be feeding my obsession of taking photos every time I see one.