The Little People

Deep in the woods perched the pixie. I hid myself in the bracken and waited for his magic to begin when suddenly he turned his impish eye in my direction and spoke: "Can I come down now please, Dad, and why are you crawling about under those leaves?" And so the spell was broken and I returned once more to the human world.

Yes, it's the mighty Ganoderma - the Artist's fungus, so called because any patterns or words you might scratch into its soft underside will stay there for good. The sturdy shelf that Jerry's sitting on here is just the fruiting body, the toadstool bit; the rest is devouring the insides of its Beech tree host. This particular one is in the woods behind the Griffin Pub in Godshill, a place I visited for the first time last year when I went on a fungus foray there run by the IW Natural History Society and led by Dr. Colin Pope. It was absolutely brilliant - loads of weird and wonderful things, plus an excellent rope-swing for the kids and the pub to look forward to on the way back. Toadstools, rope-swings and Guinness - it really doesn't get any better.