Want to go mushrooming this fall? Here's what you could find.
Aastha Shetty | CBC News | Posted: October 10, 2022 10:00 AM | Last Updated: October 10, 2022
University of Guelph professor teaches students the value of foraging for mushrooms
For most, picking out delicious mushrooms begins with pulling out a shopping trolley and walking into the nearest grocery store. But mushroom foragers, also known as mushroomers, are drawn toward the wild and vibrant world of mushrooms growing in the mossy corners of our urban jungles.
Dianne Borsato, a mushroomer, artist and professor at the University of Guelph, said many mushroomers are on a mission to find delicious ingredients, but filling up a cooking pot is not their only motivation.
"Some people do it more as a kind of educational activity, almost like how people go birding. It's just to explore their diversity of species and, you know, admire and learn about different kinds of fungi in the forest and the role they play in ecosystems."
Last Wednesday, she led her student team of like-minded mushroomers to forage off the side of a busy road. They began their journey by pushing aside the shrubbery, running their fingers over bright green, lichen-covered tree trunks, and looking very, very closely for mushrooms big and small.
It's like a giant ball of brown, and it kind of looks gross, but it tastes good when you make it into tea. It's earthy. - Nevan Hinks, student
For art student Nevan Hinks, mushrooming is an excuse to walk around the forest with other artists. Her basket was scattered with a variety of findings.
"It's my giant basket of [small animal] bones. I also found the chaga," she said. "I lived on a farm and they grew there and we would make tea out of it. It's like a giant ball of brown, and it kind of looks gross, but it tastes good when you make it into tea. It's earthy."
Danan Lake said he has prior experience foraging for wild berries and nettles in British Columbia, but it's his first time looking for fungi in Guelph, Ont.
"I have a a little basket full of samples of toad stools," he said, running his fingers over his collection of the reddish brown and white mushrooms he found growing on tree trunks.
Lake also collected some other items that caught his eye like "a peanut shell that a squirrel was eating and and a pair of dilapidated glasses... mostly little toad stools that are or samples of nice colours. Very dense and hard, most of them."
Borsato guided a team of about 20 art students new to the practice of mushrooming on Wednesday. She said there is a great therapeutic value in searching for fungi in the wild.
"Mushrooming is a great practice at looking closely and coming to your senses. Moving slowly and really paying close attention to things," she said.
"There's all kinds of interesting material to research and study and make art with and explore."
Borsato has turned her passion for mushrooms into a guide for aspiring mushroomers, called Mushrooming: the joy of the quiet hunt.
She said the best time to go foraging for mushrooms is a day or two after there's been some rain during the fall season.