As I reach the top of the cliff, a lone raven soughs south on an errand, flying at head height. In the bronze and iron ages, headlands like Castell Bach and Ynys Lochtyn in Ceredigion were used as summer camps for festivals and coastal foraging. This holiday season is drawing to a close as I scramble off the Wales Coast Path on to Banc Pen y Parc to visit a favourite tree.
Even though it should be wizened by the prevailing westerlies and dieback – which is rampant in this valley – this huge ash hasn’t lost its ambition. I pace out its dimensions: 18 yards (16 metres) for the trunk, 23 yards for the crown. Its lichened trunk grows horizontally, leaning on its elbow, so I can perch in branches that should be inaccessible. It kicks in the wind like a boat in water, while goldcrests fuss in the gorse.
Most remarkable about my sortie, though, is the fungi: on the tree itself, a yellow dryad’s saddle, a bracket fungus; in the field, large parasol mushrooms with their dark nipples; and dog vomit slime mould, like uncooked bread-and-butter pudding. I find a cedar waxcap (distinguished from the snowy waxcap by its leathery smell when crushed) and my favourite, yellow brain fungus (Tremella mesenterica), an orange geometric growth on a dead gorse branch. As I stand unseen in the bracken, the raven returns. It flips itself over and flies upside down, chuckling to itself.
Later on, I call by the National Botanic Garden of Wales in Llanarthne. The Waun Las national nature reserve of semi-improved grassland there has no less than 30 species of waxcap, seven of which are classed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list. Two highly informed members of staff show me the splendid waxcap, with its engorged scarlet fruit, and the difference between the golden and the butter waxcap (it’s how the gills run into the stem).
The slimy waxcap lives up to its name. Golden spindles, part of the coral fungi family, look like creeping fire in the grass. They point to honey fungus at the foot of another dying ash, indistinguishable from dead leaves. Further up the slope, ballerina waxcaps twirl their tutus. These are sci-fi flora, as outlandish as cartoon entities.
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