Local woman discovers ‘mystical’ fairy ring near her home
Posted on Thursday, September 7, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bcdr/News/39422/
BENTONVILLE — When Virginia Warren discovered a wide circle of toadstools in a field behind her house, she scratched her head in bewilderment.
“ I’ve never seen it before, ” Warren said. “ My sister-in-law was coming in from town, and she called me yesterday morning and said, ‘ I forgot to tell you someone’s put some white rocks in the field. ’ We got down there, and it was these white mushrooms. ”
In earlier times, before the World Wide Web, curious folks like Warren were left with just their imaginations to determine the cause of such strange occurrences as mushrooms in a ring.
Some people said the circles were caused by fairies or pixies dancing in a circle, wearing down the grass beneath their feet. Toads, some people surmised, would sit on the circle, poisoning it, hence the name toadstool.
Others thought maybe the circles were caused by elves dancing in a circle, or perhaps the circles were the remnants of witch gatherings. Another myth states that the odd rings are doors into the fairies’ world, where people are transported to other places.
But before Warren could come up with an explanation of her own, she checked the Internet and found that the rings — commonly called fairy rings — are caused by fungi that spread their spores in a circular fashion underground. Since multiple spores from separate fungi overlap in the inner part, fallow soil is only to be found away from the center of the circle, causing fairy rings to grow sometimes up to 50 feet in diameter.
“ They don’t occur every year in any given location. The conditions have to be right, ” said Robert Seay, a county extension agent for the University of Arkansas’ Cooperative Extension Services. “ They pretty much got triggered (this year ) when the rainfall got started. ”
Seay has seen various forms of fairy rings over the past 30 years, including many that don’t actually have the big white mushrooms that Warren’s ring has, but just a black or brown ring in the grass.
“ Many people over the years just thought someone took a can of black spray paint and painted a circle in their yard, ” Seay said.
The fairy ring on Warren’s property on Spanker Creek Road off Benton County Road 40 is about 15 feet in diameter, and the ring seems to be growing thicker with more mushrooms, Warren said.
“ They are really unusual, ” Warren said. “ I’ve seen wild mushrooms or toadstools lots and lots of times, but I’ve never seen them like this. ”