A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1323 entries
fairy ring
A fairy ring is a circle of mushrooms, or a circle of darker or deader grass, produced by a fungus growing outward from a single starting point. The mycelium spreads evenly in all directions underground, exhausts the nutrients behind it, and fruits at the advancing edge, so what shows above ground is the rim of an expanding disc. Rings grow a few inches to a couple of feet a year and some in Europe have been measured at several hundred years old.
Etymology
The English name is medieval and comes from the explanation people had for the thing before they had the fungus: that the ring marked where the fairies had danced in the night, and that stepping inside it was a mistake. Nearly every European tradition has a version. The French called them sorcerers’ rings, the Dutch called them devil’s churns, and in Germany they were the marks of witches dancing on Walpurgis Night. Austria attributed them to a dragon’s tail.
Notes
Over fifty species make rings, but the classic in old turf is the fairy ring champignon, Marasmius oreades, whose second name means mountain nymph. The grass immediately inside the ring often grows greener and taller, because the fungus is releasing nitrogen as it breaks down the organic matter it passes through, so a ring can be read in a lawn long after the mushrooms have gone.