Cuckoo Mushrooms
Another feature of the wet summer is the variety of fungi already sporing in field and hedge, and even on the disgusted gardener's lawn. Last week in the meadows of Oxford I found the cuckoo mushroom, as the early summer intruder is called by country folk. And a few days later I saw some for sale in a shop in Cranbrook in Kent. So their appearance is wide-spread. It is odd how one never becomes quite familiar with the fungus family. Perhaps it is because they are not of 'this world, but are chilly-skiAned ambassadors from another planet, dropped on our earth during some remote disturbance within the family of the sun. No wonder that legend associates them with the fairies, and the moods of the moon. There seems to be such a significance in their habits, if one could only interpret that significance. Why should a perfect ring of puff-balls appear overnight on a lawn whose foundations I laid a few years ago in prosy rubble from a builder's yard? But there they are this morning, inch-wide domes of creamy crepe, forming a ring two feet in diameter. I see them at a conjurer's trick. But who is the conjurer?
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