POETS have written much of autumn and the glory of its many fruits.

The Mountain ash, bright with scarlet berries, is typical, a Northern symbol of this season.

One noted by the Russian Alexander Blok, in his Autumn Love:

"When rowan leaves are dank and rusting

And rowan berries red as blood..."

My generation is more familiar with Keats.

He never mentions the rowan - but then he was a Southerner!

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch eaves run..."

No poet mentions those other fruiting bodies; strange organisms often of brilliant colour, bizarre or beautiful shape and sinister, magical background.

These are the fungi - fruiting parts of a world-wide, multitudinous race.

They are common to old Westmorland's 'backend'.

The Fly Agaric is rich in colour, use and folklore.

Was this the toadstool used by Viking 'berserkr?' To create a mad, unstoppable, naked warrior, uncaring of blow, savage wound, or any other hurt? Amanita muscaria is the scarlet-capped, white-spotted umbrella once found in many a child's book.

Containing lysergic acid, it is a mind-bender as well as welcome fly killer once found on Victorian farm windowsills.

It is a deadly "magic mushroom" causing irreparable brain damage to the eater.

Equally beautiful is the sulphur bracket - glorious, flamboyant yellow with peach-coloured top; often found on yew trees - occurring as a destructive, deadly menace to Nelson's oaken ships even before launching.

The real killers (many fungi are harmless) are the Death Cap, and the frightening 'Destroying Angel', pushing leaf mould aside, looking like a hard-boiled egg cleanly shelled.

Both of these pallid, sly assassins may kill - but many hours after ingestion.

The Boleti - some rough as a dog's back - but eatable, and the distasteful 'Sickeners', beautiful, magenta-topped but certainly vomit inducing, may grow close together.

A Tremelalles species, common to the Furness Fells, crouches under bracken in bunches of miniature, bright yellow 'bananas'.

Westmerians once pocketed Daldinia concentrica - black, resinous 'cramp-balls' - to fend off both lightning strike and sudden, painful muscle spasm.

Kid leather-topped Razor Strop sharpened Westmerian cut-throat razors.

Fairy rings, circles of champignon fungi increasing in diameter each year as the toadstool chain grew outwards, still mystify many.

Stinkhorn is soon obvious; quickly changing scented lacy cap to giant stink bomb with foul, slimy top delighting greenbottle and loathsome blowfly.

Giant umbrellas of Parasol mushrooms - marvellous in soup or with grilled bacon - grace the dunes.

Shaggy ink caps (with built-in self-destruction - autolysis) - dissolve into black ink, but may be eaten in the earlier 'lawyer's wig' phase.

The 'Jew's ear' of medieval racism grows on elder trees - the bush, according to folklore, from which Judas hung himself.

Even lowly puffballs fascinate.

If every spore from one individual grew to fruition, they might cover half the world's land.

NB Where to find (but not eat!)? Look in open oak and beech woods, on birches, in hedgerows, almost anywhere in shade and shadow.

Fear and ignorance destroy many, so leave any discovered alone! Places once rich in autumnal fungi produce very little in number or variety today.