After one of the poorest seasons in recent memory for mushrooms last fall — the product of a drought that lasted from summer into the early autumn — foragers were waiting with trepidation for signs of a similarly poor crop this fall.
They needn’t have worried.
The rains came and a wide array of mushrooms in large numbers burst from the ground.
“It’s been glorious for the last month or so for the diversity and abundance of mushrooms in the forests,” said Andy MacKinnon, a forest ecologist with a master’s degree in mycology, the study of fungi.
“We went from there being very few mushrooms around to being an incredible diversity of mushrooms,” said MacKinnon, co-author with Kem Luther of Mushrooms of British Columbia, a Royal B.C. Museum field guide.
One of the surprises and delights this fall, he said, is the “unprecedented” abundance of the king bolete, also known as porcini mushrooms, which he described as perhaps the world’s most sought-after “truly delicious” edible mushroom.
The timing is excellent, as mushrooms are having a moment, likely partly inspired by the COVID pandemic, which sparked an interest in getting outside and foraging for free wild food.
Well over 1,000 people turned up to view more than 200 species of mushrooms at the South Island Mycological Society show at the Royal B.C. museum in October, MacKinnon said. “It was, I think, by just about any measure the most successful mushroom show we’ve ever had in Victoria.”
The museum staged a week-long Fungi Fest featuring special events. The IMAX in Victoria has been running Fungi: The Web of Life. A Fungi Fest was also held in Cumberland in late September.
“At all of the mushroom festivals, the mushroom courses, the mushroom shows, we’ve been seeing record numbers of people. So there are a lot of people very interested in mushrooms right now,” said MacKinnon, who suspects part of the fascination for mushrooms — aside from the fact that they’re “diverse, beautiful, delicious and deadly” — comes from the critical role they play.
Some mushrooms help the forest floor decompose, while others are parasites. There’s also been a lot of hype lately around the role fungi can play in helping trees “communicate,” said Jasmine Janes, associate professor in plant ecology and genomics at the University of Vancouver Island in Nanaimo. Underground filaments in fungi connect with tree roots, creating a symbiotic relationship.
Many fungi do a combination of all those these things, which — provided conditions are right — gives them enough energy to make mushrooms.
Some mushroom enthusiasts have an academic interest, while others enjoy walking in the woods collecting for their own tables and a few earn a part-time income finding and selling them.
Janes said online platforms have made it easier to get hooked on mushrooms and start exchanging information.
“Anyone can create an account, start taking pictures and immediately get involved. Through that process, you learn a huge amount as you go, as you discuss with other users and validate each other’s findings,” she said.
“It can also become a bit addictive for people — like Pokemon, you want to catch them all.”
It’s important to know what you’re doing, since eating the wrong mushroom can give you a bad stomachache or even be fatal.
Richmond resident Peter Wang said he recently came across a “striking-looking” mushroom next to his home.
Wang said the two mushrooms had fire truck-red caps speckled by white dots, one of them larger than his hand.
He took to social media to share his discovery and was warned that the fairy-tale-like “Super Mario mushrooms” are poisonous fly agarics.
MacKinnon said fly agaric mushrooms are abundant all over Vancouver Island and B.C.’s south coast this fall.
They can sometimes be “nearly the size of a dinner plate,” he said.
Mary Berbee, a professor at the University of British Columbia Department of Botany, said fly agarics are not deadly but they’re poisonous, and people will suffer from hallucinations, stomach upsets and diarrhea after eating them.
Deadly death cap mushrooms are also common in southern B.C. this time of year. Those mushrooms are responsible for almost half of the poisoning deaths around the world, said Luther.
The death cap mushroom, a species of amanita that’s found in urban areas, can look similar to edible mushrooms — it has a yellow, green or white cap and white gills — but ingesting it can result in liver and kidney damage or even death.
On the question of how to differentiate the good from the bad, Berbee said there is no shortcut.
“So, you really have to get to know all different kinds in order to figure out whether one is safe to eat or not. It’s a good idea to start out by learning to recognize the very poisonous mushrooms,” said Berbee.
Mushrooms are also having a moment as a potential medicinal resource.
Janes noted that several companies are exploring the health and wellness benefits of certain mushrooms, particularly the hallucinogenic mushroom psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms. “Even here at VIU, we have several people researching how psilocybin might be applied in certain health and wellness situations.”
Documentary series and books released in the last few years showcasing fungi are helping ignite interest, she said.
’The fungi are always there’
B.C. is home to an estimated 3,500 species of mushrooms, growing in most habitats around province, from the wettest to the driest and from sea level to alpine areas.
While they can pop up year-round, many species will fruit most abundantly in the autumn, including those popular with foragers picking for the table, MacKinnon said.
A mushroom is the fruit of the fungus, which largely lives underground. Fruiting frequency varies among species and from year to year, he said. Some fungi produce fruit annually, while others will only fruit every five to 10 years.
“For our local foragers, for example, they are probably happy that most years the chanterelles will show up.” A popular table mushroom, chanterelles can be orange or yellow with firm flesh.
While we don’t always see them, “the fungi are always there,” MacKinnon said. “They are microscopic. They are in the ground. They’re in logs. We don’t ever see them except when they decide to produce mushrooms.
“So if there is an extended drought in the summer time and the trees are suffering, then the fungi are suffering as well.”
Janes said last year’s poor showing of fruiting mushrooms suggests many fungi were “simply trying to ride out the unfavourable years, staying underground as asexual forms, and now that conditions are better, they are trying to make the most of it by producing sexual forms [the mushrooms].”
Fungi are “pretty resistant,” she said. “They can survive through some pretty adverse conditions.”
This fall’s rains and warm temperatures have provided good conditions for fruiting, she said, “so the fungal spores will be released from the mushrooms and have a good chance of success at making a new patch of mycelia” — a mat of fungal tissue under the soil.
Mushrooms we see are usually just a tiny part of the actual fungus below ground, Janes said. “Some mushrooms can be kilometres apart but still belong to the same underground fungal individual.”
Some fungus can cover several square kilometres.
Mushroom fungus also make up some of the largest and oldest living organisms in the world. An armillaria gallica in Michigan appears to be 2,500 years old, MacKinnon said
Despite this season’s bounty, that is no guarantee of what will happen in future. How climate change might affect mushrooms is the “million dollar question,” Janes said.
“Climate change is going to impact everything and likely in ways that we can’t even predict, because we are just barely scratching the surface in understanding the natural world, its complexity, and all the intricate inter-relations among species.”
Some species may expand their distribution. Some may disappear, she said.
“The sad thing is, generally speaking, we know just a fraction of the fungi out there, and within that fraction, we know an even smaller number in any detail.
“Predicting what might happen to fungal species over time is a tough one, because there is still so much we don’t know.”
To learn more about mushrooms, MacKinnon suggests getting together with experienced, like-minded people. Start with a local mycological society or join a natural history society.
There’s even a place for romance amid mushrooms.
“I like to tell people that if somebody shares their favourite mushroom spot with you, that is the most certain profession of true love,” he said.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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