Fungi Finds with Dr Eirene Williams 17th October 2026
For the fourth consecutive year, Dr Eirene (‘Rene’) Williams made the long drive from Croyde in an old Range Rover, to share more of her knowledge about fungi. We had decided on an indoor event this year, since it literally poured with rain last year – and predictably, the weather was glorious! As ever, Rene brought many different and strange examples to look at and talk about and books that might be of interest to us.
Her obvious enthusiasm for her subject is infectious, and she can talk high science as well as simplifying information for the lay person without talking down. She explained the di erence between gilled mushrooms and those with pores, chatted about different varieties of honey fungus as well as keying out some difficult Russulas.
Despite a poor year for fungi in general, various members of the HNS attended and brought along different specimens for identification and conversation. Some were as big as dinner plates, some tiny.
iNaturalist is not great for fungi and the amateur needs to have captured many characteristics for any potential species identification. Eirene shared the app she uses to help with ID for difficult specimens – Picture Mushroom Identifier
https://picturemushroom.comThis is an American developed app so has some limitations in the UK and has a subscription fee of £30 per year. But if you are keen to start learning more about fungi and want some help, this might be a good place to begin.
Eirene also shared her current interest in Giulia Furci a mycologist from Chile who is making international news and advocating for fungi, which at present have no real voice in conservation; she says..
Giulia Furci “Discussions of current [global] sustainability policy have a huge blind spot: the absence of Fungi, one of the key components of natural ecosystems”
One of the things that Giulia is keen to explore is discovering knowledge from old wisdom, amongst indigenous people of diverse countries. This captivated many.
A Fungal Foray led by Dr Eirene Williams – 19 Oct 2025
Despite having been postponed twice due to bad weather we had a very good turnout for our Fungal Foray on Sunday afternoon, led by Dr Eirene Williams. Despite the weather being very damp and misty when we arrived, the sun came out about halfway round and it turned into a beautiful, warm autumn afternoon.
We set off from the car park at St Nectan’s Church in Stoke, armed with trays to collect examples of the fungi we encountered on our walk. We covered several different types of habitat including the Churchyard, an old lane between steep banks, a grassy field and deciduous woodland before heading back up alongside another grassy field. Perhaps not surprisingly the sunken lane and particularly the woodland yielded the greatest number and variety of fungi. There were a lot fewer in the field and other open areas, probably down to the dry spell of weather we had had over the previous couple of weeks.
We proceeded in a slightly disorderly fashion, with some people intrepidly exploring at a distance from the main group, climbing up and down steep slopes to reach particularly interesting-looking fungi while others kept fairly close together. Eirene was kept very busy both searching for and pointing out fungi as we walked and also identifying the various specimens that other people had found. Fortunately, we all managed to get back to the churchyard at the end with our finds, and Eirene did not need to blow her whistle once!
We then proceeded to lay out all the samples we had collected on a couple of tables, divided into 2 main groups of gilled and non-gilled fungi and then into various subgroups according to similarity. Eirene named most of them, although there were a few that she took home to investigate further before she could accurately identify them.
Eirene has provided a complete list of all the species we found this time
Clare has added this information to the list from the previous fungal foray in 2023.
These are included below
