Mushroom Magic

‘Is the Land of Enchantments up there?’, said Joe, nodding his head towards the top of the (Faraway) tree.

‘It must be’, said Silky. ‘I’ve met two witches and two enchanters coming down the tree today. They don’t live here, so they must have come down from the Land of Enchantments.’

‘They come down to get the scarlet spotted toadstools that grow in the Enchanted Wood’, said Saucepan. ‘They are very magic, you know, and can be used in hundreds of spells.’

Excerpt from The Folk of the Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton

 

Who would have thought the Faraway Tree books I read over and over again as a child would some day come alive for me in a most unexpected yet delightful way.

Having lived in Melbourne for more than two decades, it’s only recently (and quite late in life, I’m ashamed to say) that I first stumbled upon the scarlet toadstools Enid Blyton often wrote about in her stories.

It happened like magic while I was floating around the Gippsland region one fine autumn afternoon waiting for the sun to set.

Driving slowly through a nature reserve to kill time, I caught sight of little red “knobs” poking through the grass.

I leapt out of the car with my camera in tow and as I got closer, childish excitement raced through my veins.

The red knobs turned out to be mushrooms!

And they closely resembled the toadstools etched in my childhood imagination. Wow! What a find!

Autumn is mushroom season, when glorious days of sunshine follow a spoil of rain.

As it turns out – and I am now convinced fairy magic had something to do with it – I found more and more of these cute scarlet mushrooms popping up in various other places such as the Yarra Ranges and Trentham.

Yet it was in Daylesford during a relaxing stroll around the town’s picturesque lake that I discovered a mushroom bounty.

Steep banks along the water’s edge and tree-lined terraces along the walking track were a minefield of funky fungi.

I carefully stepped around mushrooms lurking under the tall trees or hiding under leaf mulch. Quite a few mushrooms had been trampled on or carelessly uprooted by those not appreciative of mushroom charm.

The spotted red mushrooms known as Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) are extremely poisonous.

Some cultures use it to kill flies by leaving dried pieces of the fungi in a bowl of milk. When the flies consume the mushroom, they either die or become intoxicated and drown in the milk.

Not familiar with what types can or can’t be eaten, I was happy to just revel in the pleasure of spotting the different mushrooms peeking out here and there on my Daylesford walk.