Mushroom picking - not permitted on Wimbledon and Putney Commons

We are at that time of year when the fungi start appearing on the Commons.

Tempting as it might be to pick a few for your breakfast, please be aware that it is an offence for any unauthorised person to remove fungi from the Commons. Byelaw 9 under the Wimbledon and Putney Commons Act 1871 states:

"No unauthorised person shall cut, fell, take, or sell, any gorse, heather, timber, or other trees, shrubs, brushwood, furze, fern, rushes, grass, or other plant, or natural product of the Commons on or from any part of the Commons."

We have, in the past, allowed some flexibility but the problem we now have is that many people come onto the Commons and pick four or five bagfuls of mushrooms that they then sell on to local restaurants. They do this with complete disregard for the environmental damage they cause to the area by trampling all over it, and without any thought to the ecological damage they are doing by stripping an entire area of fungi.

Once again a case of the few spoiling it for the majority.