Tales of Toadstools event to be held in West Bromwich

Now people are being invited to a special event being staged at The Oak House Museum in West Bromwich, named Tales of the Toadstools, which is being held from 11am to 2pm on November 7.

There will be free admission to the event and last entries will be at 1.30pm.

Lesley Rhodes, visitor services officer at the museum, said: "Lukas Large, the natural science curator at Birmingham Museums Trust, will be showing people the different toadstools.

"We have always noticed that we have a lot of fungus and during lockdown stopped the council mowing.

"At the back of barns we had bee orchids and during a bio-blitz carried out by Sandwell Valley Naturalists we discovered we have 170 wild flowers and quite a lot of these were rare.

"We were absolutely thrilled to hear that and it has created a lot of interest.

"We have this patch of land near to the 17th Century timber-framed house where the grass did not match other areas.

"Mike Poulton, from Sandwell Valley Naturalists, believes that this area is the remains of what was West Bromwich heathland.

"We think that people will be interested in the toadstools and particularly the Fly Agaric, the red and white spotted ones, as many will never have actually seen them before.

"We get large numbers of them and we are certain that people will be interested in seeing and discovering more about them through the talk by Lukas Large.

"The event is free-of-charge and I think people will be amazed by what they will see and discover."

By Sue Smith