Strange fruit

It’s raining hard and the forest air is sweet and winey with decay. I’m walking with Nick, an old friend and former PhD advisor, emeritus professor of the history of science and amateur mycologist. For the past 15 years I’ve accompanied him on autumn mushroom hunts; today we’ve come to Thetford Forest in Suffolk. We’re carrying trugs, traditional English wooden baskets of willow and sweet chestnut, to hold our prizes – perhaps tiny fungi with hair-fine stalks, lumpy shelves broken from the trunks of rotting trees, masses like discarded round pillows, or splayed red starfish arms emerging from the ground.

Hunting for mushrooms can feel surprisingly like hunting animals, particularly if you’re looking for edible species. Searching for chanterelles, I’ve found myself unconsciously walking on tiptoe across mossy stumps as if they might hear me coming. It doesn’t work well if you walk around and try to spot them directly. They have an uncanny ability to hide from the searching eye. Instead, you have to alter