In article ,
Janet Baraclough wrote:
The message
from Anthony E Anson contains these words:

The message
from "Colin Davidson" contains these words:

Yes, though certain mainly ignorant but influential voices are trying to
get legislation enacted that will effectively prevent anyone from
picking fungi.

Really?

'Fraid so. I've got a news cutting stashed awai in a heap somewhere or
other.

Isn't that also because commercially minded pickers have been
stripping "wild" colonies? I know a woodland area within reach of
Glasgow which was regularly targetted by a vanload of pickers who were
supplying upmarket restaurants; without the land owner's consent.

Yes. There is a traditional war between gypsies who have collected
field mushrooms for sale as far back as anyone can remember and the
landowners who want to stop them. Some 20 years back, the trend for
wild mushrooms extended from blewits in the Midlands and so on to
the fancy London restaurants. When I have been back to the places
I used to pick fungi in the New Forest, the locations with the main
edible varieties have clearly been picked out very early.

Of course, the damn bureaucrats and their camp followers regard the
Right Solution to this as making fungi the landowners' property,
rather than addressing the ecological problems that mean suitable
woodlands are shrinking.

I know of no evidence that picking for personal use ever has caused
a noticeable effect, which isn't going to stop it being banned.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.