Jess Starwood - Mushroom Wanderland: A Foragers Guide to Finding, Identifying, and Using More Than 25 Wild Fungi

Mushroom
Wanderland

Mushroom
Wanderland

A Foragers Guide to Finding,
Identifying, and Using
More Than 25 Wild Fungi

Jess Starwood

To my daughters, Isabella and Sage,
May you always find wonder
wherever you wander.

Contents

I went to the woods
because I wished to live
deliberately...
Henry David Thoreau

Just what is it that fascinates us so deeply about mushrooms? Is it their curious shapes, mystifying colors, and alluring textures? Is it their mysterious and ephemeral nature, showing up ever so briefly, seemingly whenever they please? Or is it a primal and natural feeling of hunting for food that they evoke from us? Maybe its their uncanny way of showing us just what it means to be human in this complex experience of life. As a parent, a teacher, and once a curious child myself, Ive even noticed a feeling of childlike wonder that comes with mushroom hunting. After all, I have never known a child who was not inherently curious about the natural world around them.

I distinctly remember my first mushroom hunting adventure. It was a cool, dreary November morning in Los Angeles when I met up with a group of like-minded nature-curious folks for a class on wild edible plants and mushrooms. I already had some introductory knowledge of edible plants and medicinal herbs, as that was the focus of my masters studies at the time, but I was relatively clueless about anything related to fungi. Like a majority of people in contemporary American culture, picking a mushroom from the wild to eat seemed like a foreign and also frightening concept.

Other cultures consider mushroom hunting commonplace and a regular practice taught throughout the generations. But, growing up in the Sonoran desert of Arizona, my experience with mushrooms was next to nothing. To me, mushrooms were mystical inhabitants of lush vibrant green forests that I had only seen in animated movies and illustrated storybooks. It didnt help that most of my family members detested themthere were no foraging outings with grandparents and no treasured family recipes on how to prepare them. I was stepping into new territory.

In the foothills of the Angeles National Forest, after our group discussed the wide variety of edible plants for a few hours in the oak woodlands, we were instructed to look for mushrooms in the leaf litter under the looming oak trees. At first, I didnt see anything at all, just a carpet of brown and tan leaves covering the forest floor. I felt like I was missing something and ambled about as I strained my eyes. Suddenly, someone in the group called out excitedly, Found one! Can we eat it?! The instructor came over and examined it, identifying it as a type of bolete (most likely a Xerocomellus species) and that yes, in fact, it was edible. This concept blew my mind. It did not resemble anything I had seen at the grocery store. It was a small red and yellow stemmed mushroom with a spongey underside. I intensely looked again at the nondescript landscape before me but nothing stood out apart from leaves, sticks, and a few rocks.

Others were clamoring excitedly over their finds. I felt a bit defeated, but just as I was about to give up, I saw it. Pushing up eagerly from the earth was what looked like only a rock underneath the layer of fallen detritus. Brushing aside the leaves and dirt, I carefully extracted it from its hiding place, fully seeing its mushroom form that was previously hidden from view. I quickly collected a small handful, but had absolutely no intention of eating any.

This was the first of many experiences over the years I had in training my eyes to pick out the subtle visual cues that indicated mushrooms in the landscape. I would learn that some are incredibly easy to spotlike the enormous vibrant orange and yellow chicken of the woods mushrooms that grow on the sides of trees. But others are cleverly disguised, hiding among the duff on the forest floor, leaving only the most subtle clues for the seasoned hunter to notice. Once I began to learn more, mushrooms seemed to simply show up in plain sight, over and over, where previously I would have missed them. From that day on, mushrooms seemed to make their way into my life in every way possible, even though they had been there all along.

NATURES GRAND WORKS of art can be found in the sweeping, awe-inspiring vistas of the mountains, the dramatic landscapes of the coasts, the intricacies of the temperate rainforests, and the arid yet vibrant deserts. Yet, hidden below the surface, between our cells and intertwined with every part of earth, is the true canvas upon which this artwork has been built. Fungi are the connecting threads in our ecosystems. The interwoven connectedness of our very existence happened over the course of millennia, crafting our environment from organic and nonorganic materials, physically integrating life into the foundation of the earth below and through us. They weave in between the cells of the living and transform the dead into the building blocks of new life.

These connecting threads are called mycelium, the true organism of what we see as the mushroom. In actuality, the mushroom only serves for spore dispersalfungis unique reproductive process. Mycelium, and the intricate underground network it creates, is nearly invisible to the human eyefinding its way inside of trees, plants, and even insects and animals, until it seems to magically sprout a fruiting body. This mycelial network connects information, nutrients, and energy flow between other fungi and plants and treesin effect, the internet of the forest.

The fungi kingdom includes not only the mushrooms we commonly think of (and that are featured in this book) but also molds, yeasts, rusts, parasitic microfungi, and lichens. As well discuss in coming chapters, mushrooms and mycelia were some of the first organisms on the planet, paving the way for plants to evolve in terrestrial habitats. Much of the fungi realm is still unknown and a good portion remains to be explored, where every foray into the wild presents the possibility of discovering a previously unknown species. Fungi make up an area of research that is continually changing, DNA sequencing having switched up how we have named, categorized, and understood the seemingly endless variations of species. Fungi show us how we all depend on each other, whether they play a visible and apparent role in our lives or only support us invisibly in ways we have yet to understand.