Article from Stories magazine Vol.24. Written by Sally Coultard.
Murderers’ potions, symbols of prosperity, aphrodisiacs, and even furniture for fairies – mushrooms have held different, curious meanings to different cultures. From the realms of medicine to the dark corners of superstition, fungi have shaped our ancestors’ lives in ways few other organisms have, as author Sally Coultard explains.
Few mushrooms capture that uneasy relationship better than dead man’s fingers (Xylaria polymorpha). Emerging as if from the underworld, these macabre fungi resemble a clump of human digits reaching upwards from the soil. Pale grey when young, they darken, wrinkle and harden with age until they look uncannily like the preserved fingers of an ancient cadaver. It’s easy to see why medieval Europeans might have shuddered at the sight. For centuries, they believed in revenants: corpses that rose from their graves to torment the living. Mushrooms such as dead man’s fingers added fervour to the fearful; Percy Bysshe Shelley later captured this unease, imagining (in his poem ‘The Sensitive Plant’) fungi as ‘the decayed dead / With a spirit of growth had been animated!’
If one mushroom reminds us how readily we project our fears onto nature, another reveals how long fungi have sustained us. The oldest direct evidence for mushroom eating comes from an astonishing source: spores trapped in the dental plaque of the 18,700-year-old ‘Red Lady’ from northern Spain. Among them were those of a bolete, suggesting our ancestors weren’t merely encountering mushrooms, they were deliberately seeking them out.
Today, the best-known bolete is the porcini (Boletus edulis), celebrated in Italian cooking but found throughout temperate forests across the Northern Hemisphere. The Romans cooked with them so enthusiastically they even had a dedicated cooking pot, the boletari. Later, European settlers crossing the Atlantic foraged for familiar porcini in North American forests, including the enormous California king bolete – a comforting taste of home, only bigger.
Not every fungus looks so inviting. In conifer woods, devil’s tooth (Hydnellum peckii) appears scattered among the pine needles like giant molars glistening with ruby-red droplets that resemble fresh blood. Despite its alarming appearance, the young fungus is touchingly beautiful, with velvet-soft skin and a delicate blush-pink colour. The function of its gruesome globules remains something of a mystery, but they have been found to contain anticoagulant compounds. What a wonderfully mischievous trick of nature, hiding a medicine for blood-clotting inside something that seems drenched in the stuff.
Perhaps that is fungi's greatest lesson. Again and again, they refuse to be what we first imagine. Even the humble turkey tail, too leathery to grace the dinner table, has been treasured for centuries in East Asia for its medicinal properties, while in the forest, it performs the silent miracle of breaking down lignin and cellulose, returning nutrients to the woodland floor so that fresh life can begin. Mushrooms occupy a curious niche in the natural world. Many grow in secret, or spring up without warning overnight. Others seem to live forever, glow in the dark, or thrive where little else can. Fungi also develop close, intertwined relationships with other plants.
Countryside dwellers had richly vivid imaginations when it came to naming fungi – the elfin saddle, for instance, or tippler’s bane. Many of these whimsical nicknames have disappeared into history or been lost to more sober scientific labelling – obsolete but outrageously inspired names such as Beelzebub’s cushion, sickener’s sister, wrinkle-twig, or guilty sprout.
The more closely we look at mushrooms, the more they reveal, not only about themselves, but about us. We have feared them, feasted upon them, healed with them, and woven them into our stories. All the while, beneath our feet, they have simply been getting on with the ancient business of keeping the world alive.
Fungi Lore: The Myths, Folklore and Meaning of Mushrooms by Sally Coulthard is published by Quadrille.
If you’re inspired to bring more mushrooms into your kitchen, discover three delicious ways to enjoy them: our Mushroom and Leek Pastry Roll, Creamy Garlic Mushrooms on Sourdough, and Green Risotto with Sautéed Mushrooms.
