Mushroom foraging connects people to nature, but officials hope to stem treasure hunts
“There!” my guide exclaimed as he pointed at what most would describe as an unremarkable patch of forest ground. He stepped gingerly through a patch of poison oak, ducked under a drooping branch, and reached for what looked like a crumpled leaf.
“What kind is it?” I asked.
He gently cleared leaves to reveal a fleshy orange-colored mushroom the size of a baseball.
“Cantharellus californicus,” said Bryan Bramlett — the 33-year-old forager and permaculturist who led a scouting for mushrooms in the Oakland hills on a cool February morning. Chanterelle is the common name for the species. The trumpet-shaped fungus is prized for its rich, meaty flavor and can fetch up to $50 a pound in local markets.
About two years ago, Bramlett started Healing Ecosystems, a foraging education business based in Berkeley. With walks starting at $30, he takes groups on educational foraging walks in local parks and demonstrates how to identify various edible species — including mushrooms.
“I was just super into it,” said Bramlett. “I realized that there was a demand for it and that people would actually pay you to take them out and teach them about plants.”
Foraging for mushrooms is an ancient practice, but lately, the activity has been gaining popularity with a younger crowd. The hashtag #mushroomhunting and #mushroomsofinstagram have each been used hundreds of thousands of times on Instagram, and a quick scroll through reveals plenty of flannel-wearing millenials inspecting tree trunks and proudly holding up their day’s bounty. In Northern California, a Google search presents dozens of opportunities for learning how to forage edible mushrooms with local clubs and businesses.
There are multiple groups in the Sacramento area with websites and Facebook groups. The Sacramento Area Mushroomers, for instance, costs $10 annually and they regularly have events.
Taylor Bright is equally passionate about the vast world of mycology — the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi. As we walked through the forest, she routinely stopped in her tracks to open an encyclopedia-sized book filled with hundreds of colorful illustrations of mushrooms.
At 25, Bright has a degree in biology and is involved with the Bay Area Applied Mycology, one of the many local mushroom clubs in the United States.
“The fact that I got a degree in biology and never had to take a mycology course blows my mind. It’s this huge mega-science that is so left out of the academic world, and it’s a foundational part of our ecology that we are overlooking,” Bright said as she inspected a tiny spindly mushroom with a cap no bigger than a button.
Dr. Dennis E. Desjardin, professor of mycology at San Francisco State University for the last 20 years and scientific advisor to the Mycological Society of San Francisco, said he has noticed an uptick in interest in the field, but not one U.S university or college offers a concentration or degree in mycology.
Bright thinks that has to do with the fact that mushrooms remain largely feared and misunderstood, and said that not all toxic mushrooms are deadly. “In reality, a very very small percentage of mushrooms out there are actually going to do you significant harm,” said Bright.
In California, foraging for mushrooms is not encouraged in every state and regional park. Close to the Bay Area, the nearest park that allows collecting for personal use is Salt Point State Park in Sonoma County. The permit is free but fines are steep for those who take more than the 3-pound daily limit.
Dave Mason, spokesperson for the East Bay Regional Park district, said restrictions against mushroom picking are mainly in place for safety reasons, as Northern California is home to two of the most world’s deadliest mushrooms: the Western Destroying Angel and the Death Cap. Parks also wish to preserve and protect the plant life as much as possible.
Like many mushroom enthusiasts, Desjardin believes a complete ban would be unfounded.
“There are so many ridiculous aspects to the way they make the rules, and mostly because it’s a little easier to say nobody can collect anything than it is to actually police people that have permits,” said Desjardin. “Many of the parks are allowing people to collect berries to collect some other wild products in a certain quantity, but when you collect a berry, you’re actually removing the seeds of that plant out — that’s much more ecologically destructive than collecting a mushroom after it’s already dispelled the vast majority of its spores,” he said.
Mushrooms are merely the sexual expression of fungi, most of which thrive in vast underground networks of white filaments called mycelia. The largest living thing on the planet is thought to be a huge mycelial network growing underground in Oregon.
“You’re really not doing any harm to the individual — or even to the genetics of the population by collecting mushrooms — unless you’re digging them up underground and disrupting the mycelium,” said Desjardin.
If anything, picking mushrooms and walking around with them can release millions of spores onto the forest ground, helping the organisms proliferate.
Enrique Sánchez, who has been with BAAM and the San Francisco Mycological Society for 20 years, said those who are worried that picking mushrooms will have adverse effects on the environment should focus on a more serious threat: global warming.
“Mushrooms have a way of just coming back and coming back. If anything affects mushrooms (it’s) climate change: lack of rain, too much heat or a combination of the two. So it’s more of an environment thing than a human thing,” he said.
For Gen Zers and millennials, who came of age during a climate crisis, there is a sense of returning to nature for the answers. Many lifestyle movements driven by a young demographic — such as minimalism, the zero-waste lifestyle, and the slow food movement — have their roots in eco-consciousness.
In the last few decades, research has suggested that mushrooms have the potential to be turned into powerful superfoods, treat clinical depression and anxiety and clean up oil spills.
Mushrooms are also saprotrophs, meaning that they grow on dead or dying things. This makes them some of the most efficient composters of the natural world, and one of the only organisms that can break down lignin, the main structural component of wood.
“Deforestation and the loss of topsoil are probably one of our largest ecological crises right now, and with the loss of topsoil, the earth is losing its ability to sequester carbon. So one of the big roles of fungi is breaking down this wood, leaf litter and organic material to create this topsoil, ” said Bright.
Like anything, Bramlette and Bright caution that there is a right way and a wrong way to forage. They always encourage their students to step mindfully, not to take more than they need and never eat anything without 100 percent confidence. Above all, they emphasize that learning to forage for food is more than just filling dinner plates, it’s a way to reconnect with the environment.
“We’ve stepped back from our relationship with the natural world, and we’re so reliant on things that are extracted from it, so our relationship of reciprocity to these plants and fungi is very fissured right now, ” said Bright. “The indigenous peoples — all of their food and medicine came from the land. And when you have that type of relationship and reliance on the natural world you will do everything to protect it.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2020 at 11:27 AM.