Three new
fungi sculptures have been specially made for this year’s Wales (UK) Fungus Day
that is being held in the Garden on Sunday October 12th. Created by
two Brechfa-based artists Tina Ashdown and Laura Vettori, the wooden structures
make large the tiny fungi that feed off, and rot, wood.
Bonnet (Mycena
sp.) mushrooms have bell shaped caps on long delicate stems that you’ll
find growing out of the top of fallen logs in our Pont Felin Gat woodland. The
fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) is the iconic white-scaled red topped
mushroom which artists and storytellers have used to decorate their depictions
of a magical fairy world. Least well known, but perhaps even more amazing, is
the fluted bird’s nest fungus (Cyathus striatus): this begins as a brown
ball that opens up gradually to reveal a white interior containing spore sacs
that look like beautiful bird’s eggs. Tina and Laura, with help from
visitors to the Wales Tree Festival, have inscribed the words of a poem onto
their fluted bird’s nest fungus. This newly commissioned Welsh and English
language poem has been written by Ammanford based Eisteddfod Bard Einir Jones,
who will be making her first public reading of the poem on Wales Fungus Day,
next to the sculptures which are sited in the Garden’s Trawscoed Wood. The
sculptures will then form part of the Garden’s Magical Mystery Tour, a
children-centred leaflet that takes families around the odder parts of the
Garden.
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