Country diary: A destructive piece of artistry | Mark Cocker

Lightwood, Derbyshire: In the years since I first found this fungus, it has gorged on the heartwood of a beech tree, allowing the river to pass straight throughI found them three years ago. A large beech had collapsed across a spring, and there along the downstream side of the trunk were 19 fruiting bodies of a fungus called Ganoderma applanatum.It's far easier to remember it as artist's bracket or, better still, artist's conk, which beautifully conveys how the species extrudes like a huge nose, or hemispherical shelf. The fruiting body can endure for two decades, the upper side as thickening wavy bands with a consistency of black porcelain; the "artist" in its names refers to the way people add drawings to the pale underside. Continue reading...