The fairy ring

Fairy ring fungus
Fairy ring fungus [photograph: Andrew Town]
Just outside of Nowhere Wood, next to the school playing fields, you can, on a summer evening, sometimes see a fairy ring. The photograph shows parts of this fairy ring: sometimes you can find rings that form a perfect circle.

 

How many fungi can you see here? There are about 15 mushrooms – the fruiting bodies, but only one fungus. In the soil, the fungus exists as a tangle of small thin threads called hyphae. The hyphae, which make up bodies of all fungi,  are called mycelia.

Fungal mycelia can grow to enormous sizes. There is a fungus in a forest in Oregon, USA, which is 3.5 miles across and covers over 2000 acres. It could be up to 8.5 thousand years old!

The grass growing around a fairy ring fungus
The grass growing around a fairy ring fungus [photograph: Andrew Town]
The fungus is good at feeding on dead organisms, and returning the nutrients to the soil. This helps the grass growing around the circle to grow taller than the grass growing further away from the fungus.

 

 

Fairies dancing in a fairy ring
Fairies dancing in a fairy ring [image Brisn Froud]
People love fairy rings and make up stories about them. In English folklore, fairy rings are caused by fairies dancing in a circle. Be careful if you see one though. The stories say that if people join in the dance they would be punished by the fairies, and made to dance in the ring until they fall asleep. 

 

  1. Why do you think that fungi are useful in our woods and fields?
  2. William Shakespeare is thought to have written these lines:
“If you see a fairy ring
In a field of grass,
Very lightly step around,
Tiptoe as you pass;
Last night fairies frolicked there,
And they’re sleeping somewhere near.
If you see a tiny fay
Lying fast asleep,
Shut your eyes”

 

William Shakespeare wrote “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream” in about 1596.  In the play a group of powerful fairies cast spells on people, making their lives very difficult. Many people believed in such ideas in Elizabethan times.
Why do you think many people no longer think like this?

Hard hats, safety specs and camouflage jackets

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