Foraging for Mushrooms

mushrooms FORAGING FOR

By Natalie Elvy of frogs rafting

Before arriving in France the extent of my mushroom know-how was pre-packed and purchased button mushrooms fried on toast. Shortly after I’d moved here, my husband announced we were going mushroom hunting; I was underwhelmed. I knew one false-identification when foraging for and eating wild mushrooms could be fatal, and given my poor attention to detail I felt sure buying was more responsible.

My lack of enthusiasm surprised him - it seems in France mushrooming is a pretty standard way to pass a damp autumn day; in some areas, it can even become quite vicious. My husband’s tales transformed the mushroom-ers of my imagination (kindly, retired couples filling time) to something more akin to an eccentric elite soldier. Committed and territorial, real mushroom hunters are secretive - they’ll never reveal their spots. Often decked out in camo gear to blend in and avoid tracking, the give-away (so you know you haven’t stumbled on a special-op) will be their wicker-baskets (mushrooms don’t like plastic bags). In Aveyron (a top spot) tyre slashing incidents are common during mushroom season, and researching this article I learned that when it comes to big-money mushrooms (truffles), there are tales of prize truffle dogs being poisoned or stolen, and an instance of a truffle poacher being shot dead by a landowner in 2010.

It had never occurred to me to be intrigued (or even interested) in mushrooms, but a quick web search revealed their hidden depths. Their classification alone used to concern vegetarians and vegans, because they are closer to the animal than the plant kingdom. Happily for mushroommunching vegans everywhere, their similarity to animals is only in the way they make energy. Unlike plants who live above ground and use the sun’s energy to keep them going, mushrooms need an external food source to sustain them (like animals). As they lack any central nervous system and digestion happens outside their ‘bodies’, mushrooms (along with yeast, slime-moulds, lichens and others) have had their very own ‘fungi’ classification since the late 1960s. The general consensus is, given edible mushrooms are packed full of vitamins B & D (which can be difficult to find outside of animal products), they are a beneficial addition to any diet, and given their ‘umami’ taste (essence of deliciousness in Japanese), they can deepen the flavour of many dishes.

Many animals get excited about mushrooms. Pigs are particularly keen on truffles - the scent drives them into a frenzy, and they’ll plough a field with their snouts to find them, but they’ll hoover up any other fungi they happen upon. Our own enthusiasm is evidenced by the astronomical sums we’ll pay for truffle shavings and the lengths we take to train dogs to sniff them out before the pigs pinch them. The cost of white truffles, the rarest and most valuable in the world, starts at 2000 €/kg from truffle dealers, or 6000 €/kg from restaurants. The biggest single white truffle found in 50 years sold at auction in 2007 for £160,000 - it was 1,5kgs. These prices reflect not only the challenges of storage and global shipping (for maximum olfactory impact, a fresh white truffle must be shaved onto your plate less than 72 hours after it is unearthed), but also finding the truffle in the first place. Remarkably, and explaining the competitive nature of some mushroom hunters, humans cannot reliably cultivate many of our most desirable fungi, including truffles (found in warmer parts of France and Italy), cèpes, morilles and girolles (all of which can be found around here).

So what is a mushroom? It is to its underground network, as a grape to its vinyard - a tiny hydrated, inflated tip of a far bigger whole. Just as grapes spread the seeds of the vine, a mushroom is the reproductive solution for some fungi species. It is a reproductive organ and its job is to spread spores. The rest of the fungi is an enormous underground network of long strands of ‘mycelium’ that

transport nutrients (absorbed from decaying and digested matter) and share them with plants through their root systems. Once considered parasitic to their plant counterparts, fungi in fact enabled photosynthesising algae to make landfall by providing them with a root system on dry land. Plants reciprocate by supplying carbohydrates from photosynthesis to their fungal partners. This symbiotic relationship functions via the wood-wide-web: a super-highway under our feet for transporting nutrients, water and information (for example threats from disease, pests or enemy fungi, nutritional requirements or obstacles) among the connected species. It is a long-standing partnership. 90% of plants still rely on the woodwide-web, and mushroom hunters also benefit from knowledge about the relationships between certain trees and certain mushrooms.

Fungi are as integral to our everyday lives as they are to plants’. Aside from edible mushrooms, you’ll find fungi in foods in the form of yeast in bread, alcohol and cheeses, in fact anything that involves fermentation. Our bodies are host to a multitude of fungi in our microbiome, helping balance our digestive and immune systems, and if things go wrong, fungi are in medicines that can make them right again. It’s easy to overlook what we cannot see, ‘but the more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them’ explains Merlin Sheldrake, fungi expert and author of the genuinely perspective-changing book ‘Entangled Life’. His remarkable book proposes fungal solutions to pretty much any problems humans may encounter, and its beautiful, circle-of-life logic is persuasive. Fungi are metabolic geniuses - seemingly their tastes extend to anything from rock, crude oil, polyurethane plastics to the explosive ‘TNT’. Chernobyl is home to fungi who grow towards hot radioactive particles, and appear to be able to use radiation like plants use sunlight. According to Sheldrake our future lies in recognising fungi’s possibilities, and it is already happening. Ecologists and scientists are researching harnessing fungi’s voracious

appetites to break down plastics and clean up oilspills. Farmers are increasingly using fungi rather than fungicides, appreciating how their presence both enriches the soil in which their crops grow, and how balanced symbiotic relationships can improve the quality of their harvests. Foresters are recognising that fungi are indicative of the health of woodland, and can be used as early warning markers for ecosystems out of balance. The pharmaceutical industry makes use of fungi in many medicines and most recently exciting research into the potential of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic chemical in magic mushrooms, in treating patients with serious depression and anxiety. Fungi are integral across the spectrum of human experience, and we’re learning more about them everyday yet incredibly, over 90% fungi species remain undocumented, and their possibilities undiscovered.

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If you’re mushroom curious, here are a few tips:

• Get a good mushroom book (with pictures) so you can check what you find*. • Mushrooms literally ‘pop up’ after the rain, and there are many delicious, easy-to-find species in fields and forests around here - you don’t need to find the big names to enjoy a mushroom dinner. • Big names around here include : - Cèpe de Bordeaux / Bolet : Spruce and Beech forests; light and airy areas; July - Nov - Girolle / Chanterelle : Coniferous forests, especially Spruce ;

Rarely under deciduous trees; July - Nov - Morille : Near water sources, the woody banks of streams / rivers; often beneath Ash trees; April & May

*More than 10,600 people were poisoned and 22 deaths from mushrooms were reported from 2010 to 2017 in France. Invest in a good mushroom book, and know you can take mushrooms to the pharmacy for identification. Don’t munch on a hunch: if you’re not 100% sure about what you’ve picked, don’t eat it.