While out for a walk on Saturday, I spotted a rather nice clump of oyster mushrooms on a still living beech tree. They were quite high up; standing on tiptoes I only just managed to get at the bottom one with the tip of my knife — it made me a delicious breakfast yesterday. The other four or five I could see above it I had to leave behind.

I was otherwise occupied yesterday, but, in spite of the miserable weather, decided to pop back for the rest of them today: equipped with a Gitzo monopod to which I strapped a good size bushcrafting blade for that extra reach.

(The monopod is really just a glorified, not to say rather expensive, walking pole, something I got many years ago during a particularly bad acute episode of GAS. It does’t get used much these days, but its one advantage over a walking pole is that it folds down to 35cm, so fits inside my small backpack — I don’t feel old enough to walk around here with poles!)

I must admit standing up here on the elevated ground with the gale howling through the tall old beeches around me doesn’t seem too clever just now. For all my fondness of the beech, they are one of the most fragile tree I know, as I am reminded by the sizeable limbs on the ground all around me. But needs must, mushrooms grow fast, and the window for collecting them once they appear is very small.

My improvised spear worked a treat and I got what I came for in no time, leaving a couple of the smaller fruiting bodies behind to grow bigger, and rubbing some broken bits into one of the bigger broken off limbs on the ground. I reckon I have enough for four or five meals. In any case, this is a wonderful find, the oyster mushroom can fruit for many subsequent years, and just now it’s about the only edible thing to be found.

I have been coming to this place for some 20 years now, but never seen oyster mushrooms here; these ones are growing from a small crack on the windward side of the tree which makes me think they might have come on the wind, so once the weather gets bit better, I shall have a closer look at some of the beeches down that way.

The mushroom haul is destined for the freezer, but just now as my buffalo kit is dripping off into the bathtub, they are under bowls on three dinner plates to get some spores from them — I am making up my mind whether to try to cultivate some, or just spread the spores around a bit, there is suitable dead beech and oak wood around the neighbourhood.