toadstool time

When I asked Paula recently where we should go for a bike ride the following day, she favoured a short ride, but when it looked as though the weather would be cooler than it had been recently—temperatures have been 5 degrees above what I normally expect in November—she changed her mind and suggested instead that we go ‘out west’.

This would mean a ride of at least 80km, which would be further than we’ve managed so far this winter, but it turned out to be interesting for a totally unexpected reason. A lot of the distance we cover when heading to the Kam Tin River is along Drainage Services Department (DSD) access roads, which run alongside rivers and are therefore quite flat, and we noticed the first of several clusters of toadstools shortly after leaving the urban area, beside the road that runs along the west bank of the Sheung Yue River, a short distance downstream from its confluence with the Shek Sheung River:

The next DSD section on our outward journey was along San Tin Tsuen Road—where DSD access roads can be accessed by motor traffic, they are often named, and this road also provides access to the large area of fishponds north of San Tin—where we spotted a couple of examples of the same fungal species:

The kerbstones provide some idea of scale (the largest examples in this collection are around 10cm in diameter).

I can’t remember where I photographed this solitary example, but it was probably somewhere in the Kam Tin River area:

Having done just a few of the many cycling diversions in the Yuen Long area (‘hospital path’; ‘Yeung Uk transit’; ‘big tree temple circuit’; ‘Shap Pat Heung exit path’ (part of this segment—6.00 to 6.48 on the video—turned out to be so heavily overgrown that we will be missing it out in the immediate future, although I’ve already discovered a new path that could mean we never go that way again); ‘journey to the west original path’; and ‘alley ballet’), we were on our way home, cycling along Pok Wai South Road, which runs along the south bank of an unnamed tributary of the Kam Tin River, when Paula spotted this group of toadstools:

A short distance beyond the previous location, we crossed the river via a road bridge and immediately doubled back along Yau Pok Road, which runs along the north bank of the tributary, where we soon spotted yet another fungal cluster:

This is a closer view of the three individuals on the left:

You will have noticed that all these photos are examples of the same species, although I’ve so far been unable to identify that species. However, the rule of thumb with fungi is that they are poisonous, unless you’re certain that they’re not. That’s why I’ve referred to the fungi pictured here as ‘toadstools’. The term ‘mushroom’, in my view, should only be applied to edible fungi. Of course, I should make an exception of Psilocybe cubensis, popularly known as ‘magic mushrooms’, which contain the psychoactive compound psilocybin and are not a culinary item.

The only time I’ve ever picked fungi to eat happened when we used to cycle to Sham Chung in the Sai Kung Country Park to visit our friend Tom Li and eat his incomparable pan-fried noodles. I’d noticed a large number of mushrooms in the field in front of his store, and when I looked more closely, I thought they looked remarkably like Agaricus campestris, the field mushrooms that grow in profusion back in the UK. I picked a big bagful. This must have been when we still lived in Sai Keng, which is within walking distance of Sham Chung, because as we walked back home, I couldn’t help but notice that a couple walking in the opposite direction had eyeballed my bag and its contents. The next time we visited Tom, he told me that the couple had asked him where I’d obtained the mushrooms. “Out there,” said Tom, gesturing towards the field.

“But they’re poisonous!” exclaimed the couple in horror.

There had been several widely publicized ‘mushroom’ poisoning cases in Hong Kong in the weeks leading up to this incident.

However, the ones I picked were delicious, and I’m still here.