Blood Mushroom




(Not a stunning picture, but enough to prove I'm not making this up!)

In the afternoon, a flock of starlings blackened the branches of the fat trunked ash. I had left my desk to witness the disturbance. The sun shone, and the bird shapes shrieked.
Last night Mr tried his best not to run over a rabbit. It had a poor instinct for car tyres.
Leaves fell to our windscreen, pale in the headlights, whirling ghostly. The world was cold and dark and beautiful, the sky thick with dreams.
This morning we did not go walking in the woods because of the boom of echoing shot. We went to the unturned fields instead, trod badger paths, found an old hedge boundary in a steep neglected copse.
In the coppice I was looking for a mushroom that Boy and I found, growing in a tree base. Light brown, soft, oozing bright ruby dots. At first glance, it struck us as a recent kill site. But then, on second take, the gently sickened awe, to view stigmatic fungus.
Things lately have a strange feel, pushing over the edge of eerie, into a kind of aesthetic macabre. This evening the moon back lit mottled deep grey cloud and made haloes and I nearly drove into the hedge. There's a beauty that can pull the life out of you, not through malice but through profundity.

To view some facts and pictures for bleeding mushrooms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydnellum_peckii

Comments

  1. Suze27 October 2012 at 00:11

    Can I confess something to you? I'm afraid to click your link.

    That last sentence has me haunted more than anything, though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lisa Southard27 October 2012 at 09:11

    I'm going to try to get the photo to load up again later- weird as it is, there is a mushroom that exudes a red liquid. It grows nestled in tree roots and helps the tree get nutrients, so it is a lot lovelier than it looks! On writing the last sentence I knew you would connect with that, as soon as the words came out, because I could have described it as seeing God.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lisa Southard27 October 2012 at 09:55

    Photo now included! Doesn't look any where near as dramatic as we felt on finding it, but worth sharing, I hope!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tyrean Martinson27 October 2012 at 15:44

    Wow! Very cool post. Mushrooms are the oddest sort of plants, and sometimes the most fascinating.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Tara Tyler27 October 2012 at 15:48

    you are an excellent scene setter! i could take some lessons here!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Suze27 October 2012 at 16:38

    The photo has impact.

    Lily, I wrote about you in an email to a friend the other day. I don't have the email anymore but I did want you to know that I count it my very good fortune to know you -- to the point where I tell others about it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Lisa Southard27 October 2012 at 19:43

    Thank you Tyrean and Tara :-)
    Suze, I feel quite bashful now- that is a stunner of a compliment! Thank you lovely lady :-)

    ReplyDelete

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