2023-11-06 10:00:00
When we were looking at our potential new home, I noticed flaming orange-yellow mushrooms on top of a large tree stump in the garden. They had quite big, very nice hats. Mushroom connoisseurs always use the scientific Latin names, but I am happy that Dutch names also open up the mushroom world to non-Latinists. Those Dutch names are often melodious, as if they were short poems.
The name of these beautiful flame hats is also beautiful, but above all effective: beautiful flame hat. Beautiful flame hats live on dead deciduous wood, and they do not shy away from hard oak. On the contrary; oak is a favorite food. The stump in (now) our garden is probably also the residue of a thick, dead oak tree. If there are no dead deciduous trees available, a beautiful flame cap might exceptionally move to a conifer. But they prefer to choose a living deciduous tree, which they then kill so that they still get their favorite dish.
The beautiful flame hats in the garden disappeared once more. Mushrooms can often only be seen above ground for a short time; their lives take place in underground or indoor darkness. But following a month or two they appeared once more. This time they did not adorn themselves on top of the stump, but put on their hats at the foot of it.
Because everyone always asks whether mushrooms are edible: no, beautiful flame caps are poisonous.
I have planted a young oak tree at the edge of the garden. It had germinated in a bucket of soil and I freed it from its straitjacket. Maybe one day he’ll have to deal with gorgeous flame hats. As long as they do not damage the monumental red beech that covers the house and garden. It is gigantic and still looks very alive following perhaps a century and a half. Fortunately, the fungi prefer dead wood and they have had enough of that for the time being in the form of that stump.
Three times a week, biologist Koos Dijksterhuis writes regarding something that grows or blooms. Read his previous Nature Diaries here.
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#Beautifully #flaming #hats #Fidelity
