fungi – Stories from Nowhere Wood

October 22, 2025November 4, 2025

Celebrating mushroom season!

A close up of a honey fungus, showing its gills and stem, — A close up of a honey fungus in Nowhere Wood, showing its gills and stem. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Everyone agrees, it is an outstanding mushroom season. The dry summer and the warm wet autumn have created the perfect conditions for these mysterious forms which spend most of their lives living underground. Quietly, but with ruthless effectiveness, they influence and shape the growth of the trees in the wood.

But, what is a mushroom? The people living in Nowhere a century and a half ago would distinguish between mushrooms (which they could eat) and toadstools (which they could not). Learning how to tell them apart was (and is) very important for mushroom foragers. Their children would have been taught that if they were not certain, they should leave well alone. Still good advice, today.

To a mycologist (a biologist of fungi) the term toadstool is not used, and the term ‘mushroom’ is used to describe the fruiting bodies of all these fungi.

Bracket fungus on the old beech tree in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Pat Gilbert] — This bracket fungus is growing on the old beech tree. It is probably a Giant Polyphore. [Photograph; Pat Gilbert]

So, this wonderful bracket fungus is still called a mushroom by biologists.

Honey fungus growing in Nowhere Wood. — These mushrooms may be of the honey fungus in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Which fungi do not produce mushrooms? Well, yeasts are single-celled fungi that do not produce mushrooms. They often grow on the surface of fruit and help to turn apples into cider. Moulds and rusts are also fungi that do not produce mushrooms. They form fuzzy or powdery growths that spread quickly.

Yeasts and other fungi on fallen apples in Tendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram] — Mould fungi on fallen apples in Trendlewood Park. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Moulds play an important role in helping to break down fruits in the orchard, releasing nutrients back into the soil.

What are mushrooms for? The photograph at the top of the page shows the gills of the mushroom, under its surface. The gills make and store spores, which blow away in the wind. Spores can settle and grow into new fungi.

Imagine what would the world be like without fungi.

Also see:

April 9, 2025November 4, 2025

What can eat a tree like this?

This story is about how a pair of tiny insects about 6mm long and their very hungry caterpillars can eat a large tree.

Bark of a mature European Ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior). Photograph: Ash Bark – geograph.org.uk – 645097.jpg

Ash trees are beautiful: young trees have smooth grey bark, whilst older trees have bark that cracks to form diamond shapes, like the pattern we see on a chain-link fence.

No one likes to see these wonderful trees cut down in their prime. One of the problems with ash dieback disease is that there is often little to see on the outside. Yet the tree is damaged on the inside.

The trunk of an ash tree damaged by ash dieback disease. Photograph: Neil Ingram

Some beetles can bore into wood of infected trees, as the photograph shows. The beetles have made many round holes as well as carving the thin curved galleries in the wood of the tree.

The oak pinhole borer beetle — An adult oak pinhole borer beetle, which can attack ash trees. Image: John Curtis (1791–1862).

It is hard to say what type of beetle caused this damage, but one likely culprit is the oak pinhole borer, which (despite its name) can attack weakened ash trees. The infection probably occurred during the summer months, when a male digs a hole a few centimetres deep in the bark of the tree.. The female inspects the hole and then returns to the surface to mate with the male.

The female then re-enters the hole and the male follows her in. She digs deeper into the tunnel, working in a curve. The female eats the wood and excretes the fine wood fragments in her feces. This is called frass. The males help to keep the tunnels clear, by moving the grass out of the way.

The insects’ bodies are covered in spores of a group of fungi, called ambrosia fungi.

Ambrosia fungus, grown in a laboratory, seen under a microscope. Photograph: Kathie Hodge, https://www.flickr.com/photos/cornellfungi/6185749769

These fungi grow in the galleries made by the female. The eggs of the insects hatch to form larvae, which feed on the ambrosia fungi.

The round holes are part of the tunnels that reach the surface of the wood, allowing the new adult borers to leave the tree.

It is an interesting relationship between the insects and the fungi, because both depend on each other for their survival.

We talk in these stories about how energy flows through ecosy stems and how atoms are recycled by other organisms. The ash tree, the ash dieback fungus, the beetles and the ambrosia fungi are component parts of an ecosystem.

Explain how energy flows through the ecosystem and how atoms are reused.

Notes on the story

Yellow flowers

October 22, 2020November 4, 2025

Moving things on

The weather is warm and wet in Nowhere Wood.

These are perfect conditions for growing the fungi that spread everywhere throughout the soil of Nowhere Wood. Fungi are Nature’s recyclers, feeding on the fallen leaves, fruits and wood.

Mycelia of fungi. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Fungi feed on the wood of the dead oak trees, turning it into nutrients that provide energy and chemicals needed to grow new fungal cells. (These cells form long threads called hyphae). Some fungi can spread out over really large areas, several kilometres wide.

At this time of the year, the fungi are busy ‘ being’.

Fungi in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Then one night, silently and without warning, the fungi do something else.

They produce structures that we call “mushrooms” **.

Mushrooms are fruiting bodies. They produce thousands of tiny spores.

Spores are small and light. They are carried on air currents to new places in Nowhere Wood, where they will germinate and grow into new hyphae.

Fungus in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil Ingram]

Spores have often been found in the filters of jet aircraft flying at the edge of the atmosphere, so some spores can travel right round the world. When fungi produce spores they are ‘becoming’ something new: small, light and mobile versions of themselves.

Decaying fungus in Nowhere Wood. [Photograph: Neil ingram]

Then, almost as soon as they arrive, it is all over. The fruiting bodies die and become food for other fungi and bacteria in Nowhere Wood.

This is how it is. The precious molecules are used, recycled and become part of the growth of new organisms. Nothing is ever wasted.

Nearly all of the atoms present on Earth when life began to evolve about 3.7 billion years ago are still found on Earth today. Many of them are found locked inside living organisms. Sooner or later, all of these organisms will die. Imagine what life would be like without Nature’s recyclers.
You are a collection of recycled atoms. Think about how carbon atoms enter and leave your body. [Hint, carbon atoms are found in carbohydrates and in carbon dioxide.]

You can read more about ‘being and becoming’ here.

**Some mushrooms are good to eat, others are really poisonous and can kill us. It is hard to tell them apart unless you are an expert, so it is sensible not to touch or eat any mushrooms you find in a wood.

Notes on the story

Climbing the walls