Country diary 1917: fungus flourishes amid autumn decay

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 26 October 1917

In the damp wood, where the fallen leaves ooze moisture underfoot, clusters of toadstools and other fungi rise out of decay. They are white, yellow, brown, red, or crimson with chalky spots; some are a deep forbidding purple, but all alike are interesting or beautiful in form, suggesting to the children the table, stools, or umbrellas of fairy-spirits of the woodlands. On many fallen leaves are sooty spots and purple blotches, and other rusts and mildews are working on the foliage; when fungoid growths attack the fallen twigs, often covering them with ruddy pimples, and quickly turn their wood to moist red tinder and later into the soil. Flourishing on the decay, the fungus works in autumn for the growth of spring; the dormant but healthy seed, buried beneath this life in death, receives its food and shelter from the useless matter upon which the fungus thrived.

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