Nature Notes 2025 (2) and travel notes

[anna_wing]

Twelve more dragonfruit from the two plants that didn't fruit earlier this year! Eight on one and four on the other! I'm not expecting them to be too sweet, since monsoon fruits rarely are, but they will undoubtedly be juicy.



I paid a visit to my relatives in Australia, and came back with kaffir lime pickle and marmalade (their kaffir lime bush, in Melbourne, actually ripens to yellow and sets viable seed!) and vast quantities of lemons from their tree, which became candied peel and lemon curd tart.

Some friends there have just bought a house, which came with an olive tree (the olives disappeared mysteriously overnight, so presumably something came and ate them), two dormant cherry trees, a bravely flowering little rhododendron and a four metre tall orange bush, bearing huge quantities of little peeling oranges. I picked a great many, making no obvious impression on the quantity left, ate them over a few days and then turned the peel into candied peel as well. Since the skin was so thin and I like my candied peel to have a degree of tang, I didn't bother with the usual "soaking in hot water several times to get rid of the bitterness". However that meant that there was still a fair amount of orange oil left, which makes my tongue itch. So when I brought it back home we had to re-simmer it in syrup. It turned out reasonably well even so.

All of Australia was transfixed by the Erin Patterson mushroom murder case, so as one does I signed myself up for an educational mushroom walk in one of the nearby National Parks. The most interesting three hours I've had in years, possibly decades. There were mushrooms literally every step of the way, including some local cordyceps (the fungal kingdom predating the current arrangement of continents, so many of the genii are global). The local cordyceps feeds on the caterpillars of ghost moths, and emerge like little fruiting bodies resembling a rotting finger. Other mushrooms fluoresce in fantastic blue and green under ultraviolet (the chap conducting the tour had a UV torch with him), and we even found a local psilocybin-bearing species. One of the group was asking extremely specific questions about that one, but the guide warned her off it very seriously, because that particular species is one of those associated with Woodlover's Paralysis, an alarming and little-understood condition involving temporary paralysis of different body parts. And since Australian mushrooms are mostly undescribed and unstudied, he considered even micro-dosing to be unduly risky. Incidentally, the deathcap amanitas in the Patterson case aren't native to Australia. They're very common because many amanita species are symbiotic with a number of introduced European trees, which do not thrive except in their presence. This wasn't a foraging walk, it was purely educational show and tell, and I enjoyed it immensely. The company is called Partial Veil. https://partialveil.com/

I love mushrooms and will never eat any that I don't buy in a supermarket. I did get some packets of dried forest mushrooms - morels, chanterelles etc from a fancy grocer. They'll be nice in stew.

Comments

[sartorias]

I would take that walk--though I utterly loathe mushrooms in food. But they are interesting plants!

[heleninwales]

Fungi are very interesting and also remarkably photogenic. However, though I don't loathe them and occasionally fancy mushrooms in a casserole or stir fry, I'm not so fond of them that I'd risk foraging for them, other than in the veg aisle of the supermarket.

[anna_wing]

Me neither, so I specifically looked for a walk that was purely show and tell.

[anna_wing]

It was fascinating! I made a point of looking for a non-foraging walk. The guide said picking them is fine if you toss them back into the bush afterwards. They're just the fruiting body of the real fungus underground, and the spores will still spread.

[shirebound]

All those fresh oranges and lemons! What a delicious bounty.

[anna_wing]

Yes! I had so many lemons that I gave some away to other relatives who do a delicious lemon chutney.

[sovay]

There were mushrooms literally every step of the way, including some local cordyceps (the fungal kingdom predating the current arrangement of continents, so many of the genii are global). The local cordyceps feeds on the caterpillars of ghost moths, and emerge like little fruiting bodies resembling a rotting finger. Other mushrooms fluoresce in fantastic blue and green under ultraviolet (the chap conducting the tour had a UV torch with him), and we even found a local psilocybin-bearing species.

That sounds incredibly cool! I don't think I have ever been on any kind of guided nature walk.

[anna_wing]

They're huge fun if you have knowledgeable guides.

[asakiyume]

Fascinating mushroom walk! I do eat some wild mushrooms, but after one misadventure, only ones that have no poisonous lookalikes.