Happy Thought for 12 June 2026

 Have a Happy Thought:

In Aotearoa New Zealand, as in much of the southern hemisphere, now is the time of (visible) fungi: aka a forest walk right now is your best chance to see mushrooms. (other than getting out a $50 note of course)

Image: the iconic blue mushroom on the back of the $50 note. Credit: RBNZ $50 banknote - Reserve Bank of New Zealand - Te Pūtea Matua

Mushrooms, possibly due to their being an interesting mix of delicious and deadly, are fascinating for many people.

Not least of whom: Beatrix Potter (yes, she of Peter Rabbit fame).

In her spare time, she was a mycologist – studier of mushrooms and other fungi. And of course, she drew pictures. Here are just some examples of her talent.

Flammulina velutipes


Himeola auricula

Oops! Not mushrooms, just bunnies multiplying like… mushrooms. A picture drawn by Beatrix Potter a year before her first known letter to a publisher talking about Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.


Yellow Grisette (Amanita crocea) and Scarlet Fly Cap (Amanita muscaria), 1897, watercolour and white heightening over pencil on paper by Beatrix Potter (1866–1943)


Hygrocybe laeta, Beatrix Potter 1895


It wasn’t just a matter of looking at and drawing mushrooms – Beatrix Potter used microscopes to study these in detail, followed and documented life stages, and even wrote scholarly articles about fungi.

 

Another famous writer, Margaret Atwood, described mushrooms as “the roses in the garden of that unseen world.” Knowing Beatrix Potter mainly as a (beloved) children’s book author, I cannot think of a better way to describe her interest in mushrooms than that.

 

Read more about Beatrix Potter’s life in:

·       Beatrix Potter, Mycologist: The Beloved Children’s Book Author’s Little-Known Scientific Studies and Illustrations of Mushrooms – The Marginalian

·       Beatrix Potter's other life: the mushroom fanatic | Art UK

·       Beatrix Potter : a life in nature | WorldCat.org

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you, we love reading your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

CW: Blisters

Image
(CW = content warning) January 2nd Invercargill to Riverton. Distance: 33 km Steps: 42,000 (probably more because we used poles the whole day) Today was L O N G and T O U G H. It started off with a little bit of road walking, which had its own perils (wish we'd had this warning the day before, when we got buzzed by a kereru!) Basically, we walked along a beach. One beach. for the majority of that 33km. Now, don't get me wrong - it's beautiful! This photo was taken while we were still in love with it :) But after about the 5th hour of basically the same thing, we got a bit over it. It was a long, arcing beach and one local had the cheek to say "it's only one corner, what's the big deal?" Oh, and also, the blisters came out in force today. About halfway along the beach, we had to cross a small river - maybe up to our knees? But we were smart and took our hiking boots off before crossing. And that's when we realised that the hot sp...
Read more

Happy Thought for 14 February 2025

Image
Ha ve a Happy Tho ught:     There is an old saying that you learn something new every day. (My college roommate added the corollary that once she learned something, that meant she could go back to bed – no matter how early in the day it was!)     Unfortunately, sometimes the new thing you learn is, in fact, not true. So fact-checking is always a good thing to do (yes, I very much try to fact-check these emails, but have and will miss things!). One way to reset yourself is to , every once in a while , chec k out Wikipedia’s List of common misconceptions page . Here are some of the things that caught my eye during my own recent visit there. I either learned these recently, or can vividly remember when I learned them. Words in italics are mine , everything else comes direct from Wikipedia:   1. Allspice is not a mix of spices. It is a single spice, so called because it seems to combine the flavours and scents of many spices, especially cinnamon , nu...
Read more

Happy Thought for 25 July 2025

Image
Have a Happy Thought:  Reading truly is a way to explore other minds and other worlds. Science-fiction especially is a great way to explore possible futures. From Star Trek communicators inspiring the popularity (if not the development ) of flip phones... ...To the terrifyingly accurate description of American politics in the mid 2020’s in Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower and sequels...     ...And then there is Roald Dahl foretelling ChatGPT. Yep, you read that right. The author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG accurately described today’s “AI” language generators, in his 1953 short story “ The Great Automatic Grammatizator” . It’s a short read, and well worth it, here are the things that really impressed me. Dahl forecast: the over-use of strange or exceptionally long words real life : words like comprehend, boast, swift, meticulous, and delve Dahl: “For example, there’s a trick that nearly every writer uses, o...
Read more