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If you go down to the woods today....

Posted By Ian Boyd Island 2000 - Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Wouldn't you love to do this - sit on a big toadstool and pretend to be a pixie? This is the marvelous Ganoderma - a big and very sturdy bracket fungus eating away the insides of the beech tree it's sprouting from. It's also called the Artist's Fungus or even better, the Artist's Conk! It's called this because if you scratch a pattern on the underside it stays there permanently (a conk is the fruiting body of a parasitic fungus, nothing to do with noses). The Island is amazingly rich in mushrooms and toadstools and the public walks that are laid on in autumn to search Island woods for the most fascinating specimens are hugely popular, try the IOW Council Countrysuide Section for the latest walks and events http://www.iwight.com/just_visiting/walking/default.asp and and also the excellent IOW Natural History Society http://www.iwnhas.org/).
The pixie used here for display purposes is Jerry Boyd, aged 3 and a half.