A Book of the Seasons, The Season for Fungi

 I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world,

what kinds of birds come with what flowers. 

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

This certainly is 

the season for fungi.

August 24, 1853

The humblest fungus 

betrays a life akin to my own.

It is a successful poem in its kind.  

October 10, 1858

August 15, 2026

(avesong)

August 7. The past has been a remarkably wet week, and now the earth is strewn with fungi. The earth itself is mouldy. I see a white mould in the path. Great toadstools stand in the woods, but the mushroom growth of a night is already attacked by many worms and insects. I see in the pasture grass in many places small white roundish fungi, like eggs. August 7, 1853

August 10. In Clintonia Swamp I see a remarkable yellow fungus about the base of some grass growing in a tuft. It is a jelly, shaped like a bodkin or a pumpkin’s stigma, two inches long, in vesting the base of the grass blades, a quarter to a half inch thick, tapering to the grass each way and covered with a sort of moist meal. It was strong-scented and disagreeable. August 10, 1857

August 14. In the low woodland paths full of rank weeds, there are countless great fungi of various forms and colors, the produce of the warm rains and muggy weather of a week ago, now rapidly dissolving. The ground is covered with foul spots where they have dissolved, and for most of my walk the air is tainted with a musty, carrion like odor, in some places very offensive, so that I at first suspected a dead horse or cow. They impress me like humors or pimples on the face of the earth, toddy- blossoms, by which it gets rid of its corrupt blood. A sort of excrement they are.It never occurred to me before to-day that those different forms belong to one species. Some I see just pushing up in the form of blunt cones, thrusting the leaves aside, and, further along, some which are perfectly flat on top, probably the same in full bloom, and others decaying and curved up into a basin at the edges. August 14, 1853

August 14. The low wood-paths are strewn with toadstools now, and I begin to perceive their musty scent, great tumbae  or, as R. W. E. says, tuguria-crowding one another by the path-side when there was not a fellow in sight; great towers that have fallen and made the plain shake; ponderous wheels that have lost their fellows, broken their axles, abandoned by the toady or swampy teamsters. Some whose eaves have been nibbled apparently by turtle. Ricketson says he saw a turtle eating a toadstool once. Some great dull-yellow towers, towers of strength, to judge from their mighty columns. August 14, 1856

August 16. Yesterday also in the Marlborough woods, perceived everywhere that offensive mustiness of decaying fungi.  August 16, 1853

August 23. The scent of decaying fungi in woods is quite offensive now in many places, like carrion even. I see many red ones eaten more or less in the paths, nibbled out on the edges. August 23, 1856

August 24. I see some black and some greenish light slate-colored fungi. This certainly is the season for fungi. August 24, 1853

August 26.  I perceived for the first time, this afternoon, in one place, a slight mouldy scent. There are very few fungi in a dry summer like this. August 26, 1859

August 31. An orange-colored fungus. August 31, 1853

September 1. We go admiring the pure and delicate tints of fungi on the surface of the damp swamp there, following up along the north side of the brook past the right of the old camp. There are many very beautiful lemon-yellow ones of various forms, some shaped like buttons, some becoming finely scalloped on the edge, some club-shaped and hollow, of the most delicate and rare but decided tints, contrasting well with the decaying leaves about them. There are others also pure white, others a wholesome red, others brown, and some even a light indigo-blue above and beneath and throughout. When colors come to be taught in the schools, as they should be, both the prism (or the rainbow) and these fungi should be used by way of illustration, and if the pupil does not learn colors, he may learn fungi, which perhaps is better. Sepetmber 1, 1856

September 6. Thought my great dish-cover fungus a Coprolus (?) (so called from growing in dung?). September 6, 1856

September 10. Last year, for the last three weeks of August, the woods were filled with the strong musty scent of decaying fungi, but this year I have seen very few fungi and have not noticed that odor at all. September 10, 1854

September 12.  Have seen the pigeon’s-egg fungus in pastures some time.  September 12, 1858

September 21. My red ball fungus blossoms in the path in the midst of its jelly .  September 21, 1852

September 21.And now at last I see a few toadstools, — the election-cake (the yellowish, glazed over) and the taller, brighter-yellow above. Those shell-less slugs which eat apples eat these also.  September 21, 1859

September 23. I see everywhere in the shady yew wood those pretty round-eyed fungus-spots on the upper leaves of the blue-stemmed goldenrod, contrasting with the few bright-yellow flowers above them, -- yellowish-white rings (with a slate-colored centre), surrounded by green. September 23, 1860

September 24. In Wood Thrush Path at Flint's Pond, a great many of the geiropodium fungus now shed their dust. When closed it is a roundish or conical orange-colored fungus three quarters of an inch in diameter, covered with a mucilaginous matter. It is pink-red inside and the thick outer skin of many have already curled back (it splits into segments and curls parallel to the axis of the plant) to reveal the pinkish fawn-colored puffball capped with a red dimple or crown. This is a hollow bag. When you touch it, it spurts forth a yellowish-white powder three or four inches through its orifice. September 24, 1860

October 2.  We had all our dog-days in September this year. It was too dry before, even for fungi. Only the last three weeks have we had any fungi to speak of. Nowadays I see most of the election-cake fungi, with crickets and slugs eating them. October 2, 1859

 October 4. See crickets eating the election-cake toadstools. October 4, 1858

•      October 10, 1858 ("I find the under sides of the election-cake fungi there covered with pink-colored fleas");
•      October 20, 1856 (“I notice, as elsewhere of late, a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi, eaten by crickets; about three inches in diameter.");
•       October 16, 1859 ("That election-cake fungus which is still growing (as for some months)      appears to be a Boletus"); 
•       October 20, 1857 ("I see the yellowish election-cake fungi.");
•       October 29, 1855 ("There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pine”);
•      See also Concord: A Sense of Place, October 20, 2015, Election-cake Fungus Mystery.

October 5. This before they are turned to dust. Large chocolate-colored ones have long since burst and are spread out wide like a shallow dish. October 5, 1856

October 10. I find the under sides of the election-cake fungi there covered with pink-colored fleas, apparently poduras, skipping about when it is turned up to the light. The simplest and most lumpish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared with a mere mass of earth, because it is so obviously organic and related to ourselves, however mute. It is the expression of an idea; growth according to a law; matter not dormant, not raw, but inspired, appropriated by spirit. If I take up a handful of earth, however separately interesting the particles may be, their relation to one another appears to be that of mere juxtaposition generally. I might have thrown them together thus. But the humblest fungus betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem in its kind. There is suggested something superior to any particle of matter, in the idea or mind which uses and arranges the particles. October 10, 1858

October 11.  I find that the rough, white, crystalled-surfaced pigeon-egg fungus (one was noticed in report of October 5th) are puffballs. The outer thick white coat peels off first. I see it so now, but not in segments like the stellata. October 11, 1856

October 14. That coarse yellowish fungus is very common in the paths in woods of late, for a month, often picked by birds, often decayed, often mashed by the foot like a piece of pumpkin, defiling and yellowing the grass, as if a liquor (or dust) distilled from them. October 14, 1852

October 14.  At the head of the path by the pond, I saw a red squirrel, only a rod off in a white pine, eating a toadstool. It was a slightly convex white disk, (then) two inches in diameter. I saw where he had bitten off its white stump within a few feet of the base of the tree. I should not have called it an edible one; but he knows. He held it vertically with a paw on each side and what had been the lower side toward him, and was nibbling off the inside edge very fast, turning it round from time to time and letting some fragments drop, pausing to look at me. As a boy might nibble a biscuit. Are nuts scarce? I think it was not the edible one; was too big.  October 14, 1857

October 15  I saw the other day a cricket standing on his head in a chocolate-colored (inside) fungus, only his tail-yards visible. He had sunk a well an inch deep, and was even then sinking it, perpendicularly, unconscious of what was going on above. October 15, 1857 

October 16. On the south side of the Turnpike, just below Everett's meadow, a rare and remarkable fungus, such as I have heard of but never seen before. The whole height six and three quarters inches, two thirds of it being buried in the sphagnum. It may be divided into three parts, pileus, stem, and base, — or scrotum, for it is a perfect phallus. One of those fungi named impudicus, I think. This is very similar to if not the same with that represented in Loudon's Encyclopedia and called "Phallus impudicus, Stinking Morel, very fetid." In all respects a most disgusting object, yet very suggestive . . . October 16, 1856

October 17.  Notice some of the fungus called spunk, very large, on the large white oak in Love Lane, eight or nine feet from the ground on the east side, on a protuberance where a limb was formerly cut off. It is now green and moist, of a yellowish color, composed of several flakes one above the other; the length of the shelf, or chord of the arc, twenty-one inches; depth from the tree, or width of shelf, about one foot. October 17, 1856

October 20. Amid the young pitch pines in the pasture behind I notice, as elsewhere of late, a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi, eaten by crickets; about three inches in diameter. Some of those spread chocolate-colored ones have many grubs in them, though dry and dusty. October 20, 1856

October 20. I see the yellowish election-cake fungi. October 20, 1857

October 22. The rain and dampness have given birth to a new crop of mushrooms. October 22, 1851

October 27. See nowadays concave chocolate-colored fungi passing into dust on the edges, close on the ground in pastures. October 27, 1853

October 29. There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pine. October 29, 1855

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Season for Fungi

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026