British mycophobia
By Daniel Butler, author and forager
The British are mycophobes. Even the bravest beginner will only pick a mushroom if they are sure it’s edible. Back home, they then cross-reference their identification with books and the internet, check again with online experts and even when they certain of its identity, it goes in the bin anyway: ‘just to be on the safe side’.
The British have long been deeply distrustful of ‘toadstools’
(Image: Author’s own)
Only a few miles away the situation is the total reverse. The French, Italians, Catalans, Poles and Russians simply can’t get enough of them. Indeed, the last even have a special word, raszh, for a mushroom fanatic – a word totally lacking in English. Continental attitudes could be summarised as: ‘Is this poisonous? You don’t think so? Well let’s eat it!”
In contrast, the British seem always to have turned their noses up. In 1597 the great herbalist, John Gerard, wrote:
Few of them are good to be eaten and most of them do suffocate and strangle the eater. Therefore, I give my advice to those that love such strange and new-fangled meates to beware licking honey among thornes.
Half a century later this was repeated by Nicholas Culpepper:
Inwardly [they] are unwholesome to eat and unfit for the strongest constitutions . . . it loads the stomach, distends the viscera, causes a nausea and causes vomiting.
So why the glaring dietary and attitudinal discrepancy between nations that are separated by no more than a thin strip of sea water? It certainly isn’t because Britain lacks great mushrooms and we the perfect conditions for fungi: mild and damp.
Britain has a wonderful climate for most fungi
(Image: Author’s own)
There is no simple answer to the cultural divide, but a starting point might be the observation by Andy Letcher in his book ‘Shroom that until very recently all knowledge of wild mushrooms required face-to-face tuition. There were no fungal guidebooks until the mid 20th century and even had there been, literacy levels were low.
In European peasant cultures the teacher was usually a grandmother. These carried out most childcare while the able-bodied parents worked in the fields. In autumn they took their grandchildren into the woods to gather mushrooms, passing on their knowledge orally.
For centuries most British woodland was reserved for the rich
(Image: Ashmolean Museum Collection
Another component is down to mediaeval society and landownership. Britain never fully shared Europe’s feudal system. After the Black Death it broke down completely as the rural workforce started to work for money, rather than communally tilling their master’s fields in return for farming their own small plot.
Britain was also deforested. When the Normans invaded, we were already down to 10% tree cover (even today Germany has 33%, France 31% and Russia 47%). The new rulers also set about excluding the public: most big patches of wood land were declared royal hunting grounds where harvesting from the wild was heavily restricted.
This whittling at the links between people and land accelerated as the Industrial Revolution progressed and the rural poor drifted into the cities. At the same time, the newly-emerging class of landed gentry discovered the delights of hunting to plant a myriad of copses to encourage game birds. Spring guns and mantraps were placed to deter poaching and, of course, babysitting grannies.
Grandmothers are the source of fungal wisdom across most of Europe
(Image: Author’s own)
Britain has had a remarkably easy past millennium when it comes to food. We’ve had almost no famines for a thousand years while Europe has seen centuries of regular privations: disease, wars and harvest failures. A peasant fleeing to the woods during the Thirty Years War might well be forced to experiment with Gerard’s ‘new-fangled meates’ – his British equivalent was rarely driven to take the risk.
Recently, of course, foraging in Britain has started to grow in popularity, but it is still a niche activity and even the bravest of us are still ultra-timid in comparison with our Continental neighbours.