The magic of mushrooms

Neither plant nor animaL, these strange organisms are nature’s recyclers, breaking down rotting wood and plants. Without forest fungi, we’d be awash in debris

by Cecily Ross

Tonight my husband and I are having wild mushrooms for dinner. But before I whip out my sauté pan, I must decide which of the astonishing array of mushrooms laid out before me on my kitchen table is edible – and which could result in our slow and painful deaths.

We have spent the morning foraging for fungi in the sepulchral September forests of Simcoe County near Alliston with our guide, long-time Ontario Nature member Bob Bowles – naturalist, environmental consultant and mycophagist (one who eats wild mushrooms).

This last credential is no small accomplishment. “There are,” Bowles told the 25 brave souls who gathered earlier in the day at the edge of a mist-shrouded tract of pine forest, “careless mycophagists, there are old mycophagists, but there are no careless, old mycophagists.”

I am about to join their ranks – as soon as I identify the day’s harvest. This is the scary part. By comparison, our three-hour mushroom foray was, well, a walk in the woods.

The day is perfect: heavy rain at dawn has given way to a thick, humid morning. Mist rises between the rows of reforested white pine, filtering through the dense understorey of red maple, green ash, oak, poplar, aspen, beech and hemlock. The air smells of rotted leaves and pine needles. Above us, a determined sun breaks through the thinning clouds, its light threading the forest with an eerie brilliance. “Magical” is the only way to describe the day.

We are all impatient to get going, but first we gather around the back of Bowles’s van and listen as he delivers his well-polished lecture on the ecology of mushrooms.

Mushrooms, Bowles tells us, are neither plant nor animal. They do not contain chlorophyll and therefore do not manufacture their own food as plants do. Instead, like animals, they feed by digesting organic matter; unlike animals, however, they lack a nervous system and organs.

“They are in a kingdom all their own,” Bowles says, “one that includes not just mushrooms, but also bread and cheese mould, corn smut, mildew, ringworm and athlete’s foot.”

Mushrooms spring, he explains, from underground masses of cells that spread by way of filaments called mycelium or hyphae. The mycelium of a honey mushroom found in eastern Oregon covered 890 hectares and was estimated to be 2,400 years old. Strange creatures indeed.

“Mushrooms,” Bowles continues, “are nature’s recyclers, breaking down rotting wood and plant material. Without them we’d be awash in debris.”

Someone asks about the nutritional value of mushrooms. Although they are about 89 percent water, 4 percent protein, 6 percent carbohydrates, 1 percent fat and mineral, mushrooms are, nevertheless, a good source of iron, vitamin C, niacin and ascorbic acid.

But, as everyone knows, many mushrooms growing in the wild contain enough toxins to make a person who eats them very ill or even die. About 20 percent of the more than 1,800 varieties found in this part of Ontario are poisonous, 20 percent are prime edible and the rest provide a less-than-palatable, yet fascinating, excuse to go for a walk in the woods. The trick, as we are about to learn, is telling which is which.

Bowles holds up a large, handsome, cream-coloured mushroom mottled with dark brown on its cap. He explains how to use the photocopied key he has handed out to identify the mushroom. This one has free gills (gills underneath the cap that are not attached to the stalk), a white spore print (made by placing the mushroom cap on a piece of white paper and tapping gently; spores fall out and make a pattern or “print” on the paper) and a ring around the stalk. These characteristics put it in either the Amanitaceae or the Lepiotaceae families. Those of us who have brought field guides look up the species and decide that this mushroom most closely resembles the Lepiota acutaesquamosa,or sharp-scaled parasol – an innocuous, though inedible, mushroom common to the area.

Then again, it could be the Amanita virosa, or destroying angel, one of the prettiest yet deadliest of mushrooms. Symptoms of poisoning, which usually appear four to 24 hours after ingesting this mushroom, include cramps, vomiting, diarrhea and bloating.

“Once the toxins move to the bloodstream,” says Bowles, “the blood vessels expand and after three days they start to explode internally, resulting in a slow and painful death.”

Suddenly the September air seems thick with foreboding, the wet heat, heavy and oppressive. People are peeling off sweaters and rain jackets, stuffing them into knapsacks or knotting them around their waists.

“The Greeks,” continues Bowles, “believed that mushrooms came from Zeus’s lightning, perhaps because they appear so quickly as if from nowhere, sometimes before your very eyes.

“In the Middle Ages it was believed that mushrooms had a connection with witches and fairies. The German word for poisonous mushroom is todesstuhl (meaning ‘death chair’) which the British changed to ‘toadstool.’”

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