toad-spawn, toadstools, and mushrump

Of late, I've been reading and re-reading Betty Williamson's Reflections on Fungaloids.

Reflections on Fungaloids is a coffee table book and is, as such, an good showcase for Williamson's lush drawings, which are nearly-but-not-quite- botanical...but the edge I keep turning on is her writing on mushrooms.

These paragraphs in particular have me going:

"The belief in mushrooms as the supernatural children of storm and lightening, prevalent also in ancient Rome (Pliny, in his Natural History, credits thunder with causing the growth of truffles), invested the Fungaloids everywhere with great class, their progenitor the Thunder God, Father Zeus himself, being the supreme deity of the ancient pantheon, worshipped in sacred groves from Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea.

The coming of the missionaries changed all this, but long after the forest sanctuaries were chopped, the gods trashed, and the old religion driven underground, occaisional whiffs of magic still surfaced, notably in Shakespeare: the supernatural agents, summoned by the enchanter Prospero to raise the thunder, lightning, fire and rain of The Tempest, were none other than the same storm spirits who amused themselves, on nights off, 'making midnight mushrooms'. ...

"It is now known that an enormous release of fungal spores occurs during thunder storms..."

* * *

I was recently asked why mushrooms appear so often in my photos.

Well, like Williamson, I appreciate the variety mushrooms present, shaping themselves "into parasols, into footballs, balloons; into architectonic elegances, asymmetrical monstrosities; their insides hard as wood, soft as flesh, or quivery as a blob of jelly..." but what I like most about them is that they present all this variety low to the ground, and, when discovered, stay niiiice and still.

A friend, when walking in the woods, is always scanning the skies, looking for flashes of movement. Streaks of colour make her very excited. Chirping from somewhere nearby makes her stop and stare intently.

Personally, I find movement very distracting.

So mushrooms, recently dead things, and the reflections offa puddles and windows.

(Fun!)