Stradford resident, and one of the country’s most eminent amateur mycologists, Bert Brand celebrates 100th

THERE are many remarkable things about Stratford resident Albert Brand, known as Bert to all, and who has just turned 100. As well as achieving his centenary, Bert can also boast a long and happy marriage to Gill, 93, plus the loyalty of many friends drawn to his friendly nature and enquiring mind.

He’s also a man of many passions, including photography and vinyl records, but, perhaps most notably and crucially, Bert is also one of the country’s most eminent amateur mycologists – people who study fungi, including mushrooms, yeasts, and molds.

Bert was born in Shipston in 1925. His dad’s job moved him to Redditch when he was four, and then on to Alcester when he was 15. Bert left to join the RAF and during that time his parents moved to Bishopton; he joined them there when he was 30 years old.

A career in the motoring trade followed – working at Longbridge until he retired about 30 years ago.

Bert met Dr Gill Butler, a fellow mycologist, when she was running an evening class on the subject.

Love mushroomed (sorry!) and they married on 21st September 1992, settling down in Stratford together. The couple still live in their own home, with the help of Barnfield Homecare.

On Monday (6th October) Bert enjoyed a party to celebrate his 100th at the Fourteas, the 1940s-themed cafe on Sheep Street. Many friends joined Bert and Gill, with Stratford mayor Cllr Dani Hunter among the wellwishers.

Bert was also presented with a mushroom-themed cake by the British Mycological Society, of which he was vice-chair when Prof Stefan Buczacki was president. Stefan, a horticulturist and author who lives in Clifford Chambers and remains close with Bert, presented the cake on behalf of the society.

Bert’s fascination with fungi didn’t start in childhood, despite growing up in a nature-loving household. His mother collected and pressed wildflowers, and his father was an avid breeder of butterflies and moths, carefully raising them through their life cycles. That early exposure to the natural world planted a seed, but life took him elsewhere for a time – including his 13 years in the air force, moving from place to place, making it hard to keep up a hobby.

It was in the mid-1960s, around the age of 40, that fungi truly took hold of his imagination. Bert had joined a photographic club and was looking for interesting subjects for competitions.

“I became more interested but I needed to know what it was, to give it a title and so on,” he explains. The problem was that literature was scarce. “So much of the fungi we found weren’t in the book.”

The turning point came when a colleague brought in a strange specimen, unsure what it was but suspecting it was a fungus. It turned out to be Clathrus ruber, the Red Cage fungus — a striking lattice-like stinkhorn.

Soon after, Bert met Stanley Porter, a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, known for his bird and fungus photography.

“The first thing he said was, Did it stink?!” Bert laughs. Porter offered a practical solution to Bert’s identification troubles: join the British Mycological Society. He sponsored Bert’s membership, which began on 1st January 1966; Bert is now a life member.

He wasted no time attending his first BMS residential foray in Chichester.

Over time, Bert’s interests drifted from the large agarics to the microscopic fungi, the microfungi. He has seen technology transform the field – from cumbersome early photography to today’s mobile phone cameras, and from painstaking microscopy to the advances of DNA sequencing for fungus identification.

“Every time something new comes along, it throws a spanner in the works, and you’ve got to start again,” he says.

Bert’s involvement went far beyond personal study. He helped select images for the society’s reference slide collection and worked with Stefan on the illustrations for his books – and later took up the vice-chair position. In 1995, Bert was awarded the society’s Benefactor’s Medal for contributions to mycology.

Bert has also co-authored and produced field guides and articles for Field Mycology, as well as papers published in the Bulletin of the British Mycological Society.

Locally, he was involved in a Warwickshire fungus group, which emerged from the mycology section of the Birmingham Natural History Society (a society that no longer exists). The Warwicksire Fungus Survey was started at the suggestion of Dr Nancy Montgomery with the close co-operation of Bert’s wife – who he says has particularly influenced his mycological journey.

Nancy and Gill, then both academics at Birmingham University and Birmingham Natural History Society, together produced a computer map of the county’s plants – and the group later turned their attention to doing the same for fungi.

Bert’s love of fungi is matched by his enjoyment of the stories they generate. He recalls giving a talk to the Women’s Institute on poisonous fungi, where a lady in the audience stood up and declared, “All fungi are edible.” She paused before adding: “Some only once.”

At home, Bert is surrounded by framed paintings and drawings of fungi, many of which are originals by talented artists. His bookshelves include treasures such as the full volume of an 1830 seventh edition of British Plants by William Withering, volume 4 of which has a section on cryptogams – mainly fungi. He found it in tatty, loose-leaf form and rebound it himself.

He is encouraged by the growing public recognition of the ecological importance of fungi, even at governmental levels. “They’ve begun to realise that fungi are one of the most important organisms we’ve got,” he says, citing their interactions with plants and their critical role in ecosystems.

But Bert is realistic about the challenges. He sees dwindling participation among his old colleagues – noting that few are still with us and new people are needed to take on their roles – to uncertainty over whether mycology will ever be fully embedded in school curricula.

As his 100th birthday was celebrated, Bert’s legacy is not only in the species recorded or the papers and books, but in the countless connections he’s made between people, past and present, and with the extraordinary kingdom of fungi.