A few days after writing my last column about fungi I realised the surface had barely been scratched about one of the Earth’s most numerous species.

So here are some more thoughts on a fascinating but often overlooked family.

Take Common Inkcap, for example. Once harvested for ink, it is edible if you know what you are doing.

Wild Things Column: A festival of funghi

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Common Inkcap by Tony Dunstan

But glug wine with it and you probably won’t see another sunrise. The alcohol turns harmless Common Inkcap into a deadly poison.

This trick is much loved by crime writers who often weaved Common Inkcap into plots. Four people sit down to eat the same mushroom soup but only one dies. Why ? Because he or she had wine with it.

Clues to poisonous fungi are often in their name. Anything incorporating the words “devil”, “fool”, “death” or “angel” should be avoided.

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Frost's Amanita by Tony Dunstan

The white Death Cap is believed to be the world’s greatest fungal killer.

Eating just half of a single DC can spark abdominal pain leading to liver and renal failure. They are common on the ground in autumn in oak and beech woods.

Wild Things Column: Crimes against nature

Destroying Angel is even more lethal. A spoonful of soup with Destroying Angel in it can kill.

Angel’s Wings produces an amino acid which attacks brain cells. Growing on old pine stumps, they have been responsible for 17 deaths in a single year. Fool’s Webcap, Panther Cap and Fool’s Funnel may also be fatal.

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Wood Cauliflower by Tony Dunstan

The putrid smell of a Stinkhorn should deter anyone from eating it. It’s phallic appearance prompted botanist John Gerard, in his 1597 Historie of Plants, to call it the “pricke mushroom.” A public garden near Newcastle removed one recently after a sensitive visitor complained.

Recent damp, warm weather has brought a fungi explosion. Estimates put the number of UK varieties alone at 10,000, to 20,000 but incredibly scientists believe 90 per cent of fungi are still undiscovered.

Try Joyden’s Wood, Frank’s Park, Bexley Woods, Footscray Meadows and Lamorbey and Danson Parks for fungi. And don’t neglect roadside verges.

Take a good fungi guidebook to assist identification and NEVER eat any unless you are 100 per cent certain what they are.