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Alice now shares this gift with her son, Milo Haberkorn, who just turned 9. Every year, the Palisade mother and son head to the hills with their special mushroom baskets and brushes, giddy with excitement about finding a pre-cious wild addition to their dinner.
Don’t bother asking them, or any other people with a secret mushroom patch, where they got their baskets of chantar-elles or king boletus. At most, they’ll polite-ly chuckle and deflect the question, because everyone knows se-cret mushroom patches are located in places they dare not even whisper about.
“You wouldn’t tell somebody if you struck it rich on a gold mine,” Alice said. “It’s al-ways very guarded and very secretive.”
Alice and Milo like gleaning food from nature, foraging for wild tidbits of delicious-ness. They love the search and the reward, the sport and the competitiveness of finding edible fungi in the woods.
They’re part of a mysterious fellowship of woodland folk who traipse through the forest, scanning for particular types of trees that particular types of mushrooms are apt to grow near or on.
They walk, hunched over, tiptoeing on the detritus of pine needles and leaves, lest they crush the treasure they seek.
They are mushroom hunters.
‘MAGIC’ MUSHROOMSWhether you pronounce it fun-jai, fun-
ghee, fun–guy or fun-gee, we’re talking about mushrooms. And not those bland, white things found in the grocery store.
These are wild mushrooms, the ones that seemingly pop up out of nowhere, some-times overnight. They appear in a spectrum of colors, shapes and sizes. They smell like everything from fruit to a decaying corpse.
They grow on a variety of hosts, and, unless you look closely, you prob-ably don’t even notice the source of magical fungi: mycelium, a deli-cate white mass of hyphae, threads that form nets in dark, moist places that give rise to the fruiting body of fungus, the mushroom.
This tangle of fungus under the soil can almost be thought of as the roots of mush-rooms, though that is not scien-tifically accurate. These colonies lay dormant until the conditions are right and then spring forth to pro-duce mushrooms.
Some types of wild mushrooms are difficult or impossible to cultivate because mycelium doesn’t respond to a con-trolled environ-ment away from
the forest canopy and needs the symbiotic relationship with tree roots or other hosts.
It is no wonder mushrooms have long belonged to the fantastical world of fairies, gnomes and mythology. It is not just because people associate them with “magic” or hal-lucinogenic mushrooms. It is because their origins are still somewhat of a mystery.
After a few rains, a ring of mushrooms can pop out of the soil. It seems like magic, prompting people to call them “fairy rings.”
Mushroom hunters are acutely aware of mycelium, always living under the soil and providing an important link in the ecosys-tem. When harvesting mushrooms, some hunters are quite tender about cutting the mushrooms, as to not damage the source of their bounty.
They also are careful to not take all the fruiting bodies, so spores can spread else-where, and to use open-weave baskets for collecting, so the spores can escape as they travel through the woods.
“Sustainable harvest” is something of a buzzword in the mushroom community, and Colorado is working on guidelines to prevent the over-harvesting of this wild resource, according to Scott Koch, owner of Telluride Mushroom Co. (telluridemushroomcom-pany.com).
Scott is careful to only harvest mature mushrooms at appropriate times of year, and to leave plenty of the patch intact to sup-port the organism as a whole.
Scott is one of only a half-dozen certified mushroom identifiers in the state, licensed by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to identify mush-rooms for commercial purposes, according to Therese Pilonetti, the department’s unit manager.
Anytime someone collects wild mush-rooms and wants to sell them in Colorado, a certified mushroom identifier such as Scott must physically inspect the specimens to ensure they are not poisonous.
He has had a busy summer, since Colo-
rado fungophiles are having a tremendous mushroom-hunting year, mostly because of the unusually wet summer in the high coun-try. Normally, the best mushroom-hunting grounds in the West are in Washington, Oregon and Montana.
“Colorado is having an incredible mush-room season,” Scott said. “We’re in a unique position right now where Colorado is the only state in the West that really has a good supply of certain mushrooms because of the drought and the fires in the Northwest.”
LIFESTYLE
See HUNTERS, page 4D ➤
HUNTERSMushroom
DARCIE ROSE/Special to the Sentinel
It’s a remarkably delicious year for secretive, edible fungi fans
By ERIN [email protected]
Before Alice Dussart’s godfather died last Octo-ber, he bestowed upon her the most precious gift she ever could have received.
It wasn’t a set of china or a house or even diamonds.
Instead, Gordon Rhoades took Alice into the woods and showed her the location of his secret mushroom patch.
He gave Alice her wonderland.
GRETEL DAUGHERTY/The Daily SentinelScott Koch, left, owner of the Telluride Mushroom Co., and Travis Cornwell of Palisade dust off chanterelle mushrooms at their booth at the Downtown Farmers Market. The chanterelles were found on the Western Slope. “This is the year of the chanterelle,” said Scott, who is a certi!ed mushroom identi!er.
Josh Altenbernd of Paonia holds his precious morel mushrooms with delight. He and his girlfriend, Darcie Rose, have taken full advantage of foraging for mushrooms during this unusually wet Colorado summer in the high country. Josh and Darcie are members of the Western Slope Fungophiles, a group that promotes awareness and education about edible mushrooms.
DARCIE ROSE/Special to the SentinelThese are morels, a substantial mushroom that is considered “meaty.”
ALICE DUSSART/Special to the Sentinel Milo Haberkorn, 9, holds a bolete while on his !rst mushroom hunt with his mom, Alice Dussart.
The Daily Sentinel • Sunday, September 6, 2015 SECTION D
FUNGOPHOBIAWhile fungophiles love
mushrooms, fungophobes fear them. Jennifer Jackett and Travis Cornwell of Grand Junction founded the Western Slope Fungophiles group to combat the bad rap mushrooms get, educate people about the benefits of fungus, teach them how to find edible species and to eliminate the scariness of mushrooms.
“People around here get scared when they see them anywhere,” Jennifer said. “They don’t want kids to touch them in the yard, they have a really bad rap, and people are terrified to even begin mush-room hunting because they’re afraid they’ll make a deadly mistake.”
Although the world of fungi is large, the species that are edible or poisonous comprise a very small part of that world. “Of the 1.5 million species of fungi projected to be out there, perhaps 5 percent have been identified,” wrote Eugenia Bone in the book “Mycophilia.”
Of that 5 percent, she esti-mates only 400 different kinds of mushrooms are poisonous. “But in general, of the 400 spe-
cies that are poisonous, 20 are commonly found, 6 of which are lethal,” she said.
The wild world of mush-rooms offers an incredible array of diversity, which is one of the more intimidating things about fungi. If you’re going to collect mushrooms and eat them, you need to know what you’re doing.
That’s not to say that people should be afraid of doing it, enthusiasts say. But a certain amount of education is neces-sary, because few mushrooms are truly good eating.
By paying close attention to the environment in which a mushroom grows and its characteristics, fungophiles can identify those that are safe to eat. The colors and shapes of the caps, gills and stems are an initial indicator.
The next step is smelling the mushroom and maybe even leaving the cap overnight on a dark piece of paper to let it release spores, and collecting a spore print for a clue. Cut-ting the mushroom to see what color it turns is another test — sometimes when a mushroom turns pink or blue, it is a sign it shouldn’t be eaten.
Field guides and experience are invaluable in this quest for edible treasure, and following a
taxonomic key is important.On Grand Mesa, the most
common inedible mushroom is undoubtedly amanita mus-caria. Its distinctive red cap with white spots are often pho-tographed, since it is a beauti-ful mushroom and brings to mind gnome mushrooms.
Amanita muscaria doesn’t have any look-alikes in west-ern Colorado that could fool someone into thinking it was edible, so it’s easy to avoid. But it is a good indicator that edible mushrooms could be growing nearby.
Amanita muscaria is not to be confused with amanita phalloides, also called the death cap, which does not grow in this area.
“Most deadly mushroom poisonings involve the amanita species,” said Jim Worrall, a U.S. Forest Service pathologist who has hunted mushrooms for 40 years. “The one we have, it’s not deadly, but it’s not ed-ible either. In some areas, it’s considered hallucinogenic or at least an inebriant.”
“You can eat it, but you also get very sick and so there’s a lot of very unpleasant effects along with whatever might be mildly enjoyable,” Jim said.
Other inedible mushrooms are obviously not good for eat-ing, such as stinkhorn mush-rooms.
“They are really a wild group,” Jim said. “It’s hard to even completely describe them in polite company.”
Some stinkhorns are in the genus phallus, which tells you what they resemble. “They have this green slime around the tip and once that part comes out, it really stinks hor-ribly like a dead animal. The flies crawl around in that green slime and that’s how the spores are dispersed,” Jim said.
“Most mushrooms you wouldn’t want to eat,” Travis said. “Just like plants, there’s a small percentage that are poisonous, and small percent-age that are delicious.”
It’s all about education, he said.
“The more you know, the more power you have,” Travis said. “And there’s no reason to be afraid of mushrooms. We’re so comfortable with plants, we don’t even worry about keeping poisonous ones in our houses for decoration. But people are afraid of touching mush-rooms.”
CHOICE ’SHROOMSEveryone has their favorite
mushrooms. Alice loves the king bolete, a sturdy, impres-sive mushroom that can weigh more than a pound and dries well for storage.
“I love being able to put away food for the winter,” she said. “They’re really gratifying because if you find two or three
mushrooms, that’s enough for the whole winter.” She looks forward to eating them in spe-cial dishes and soups.
Mason and Piper Cornwell love morels the best, a sub-stantial mushroom considered “meaty.”
They’ve learned to mush-room hunt with their parents, Travis and Jennifer, who regularly lead forays for mush-rooms.
Though Mason is only 8 years old, and Piper is 4, they already know to look for mush-rooms in areas with cotton-wood trees. “And you have to pick them gentle,” Piper said.
“You need to kinda get under the dirt and cut them care-fully,” said Mason, noting that if you use a knife and leave the
ones that aren’t mature yet, you can probably come back next year and find the same patch.
“And if you see mycelium growing and you don’t know what it is, you can come back in two or three weeks and see what mushrooms grow,” he said.
“This is the year of the chanterelle,” Scott said, hefting a basket of the beauties. He picked 25 pounds of the frilly fungi in one morning, and sold them for $20 a pound at the Thursday Downtown Farmers Market.
Chantarelles are a well-known mushroom in the moun-tains of western Colorado, and their bright-orange patches are both fragrant and beautiful. A fruity, apricot scent wafted
from the basket of mushrooms Scott cleaned with a brush as he talked mushrooms with folks at the farmers market.
“What we’re seeing this year is just an abundance, and I’ve seen more chantarelles than usual,” Jim said. Around these parts, his favorite mushroom is the king bolete.
SECRET WORLDThe world of mushroom
hunting is mysterious and sometimes superstitious.
In her book “Mycophilia,” Eugenia Bone tells stories of mushroom hunters who stumble upon a great patch and wear the same clothes for hunt-ing from then on, for good luck.
“Some hunters carry a small basket so as not to alert the mushrooms, or pretend they are not really hunting at all, just walking in the woods, acting casual, so as not to jinx their chances,” she wrote, not-ing that some mushroom hunt-ers also never pick the first mushroom they find, fearing it will somehow blow their cover and cause the mushrooms to hide.
Alice has her own tricks. “I always sing or I whisper little forest songs,” she said. “I sing, ‘Oh show me where the mush-rooms are,’ or little made-up songs I sing to them.”
Wherever mushroom hunt-ers find a good patch, their lips are sealed. The biggest clue anyone will coax out of them is general region and elevation.
“Secrecy is synonymous with mushroom hunting,” Langdon Cook wrote in his book, “The Mushroom Hunters.”
“Stories of prevarications, falsified maps, cloak-and-dagger tactics, and deathbed revelations are passed around like family lore,” he wrote.
In other words, if someone takes you mushroom hunting, you’re a loved, trusted friend.
One thing is for sure, the mystery, the knowledge and the hunt are some qualities about foraging for mushrooms that attract fungophiles most.
“It’s the hobby with the great reward because you get something to eat out of it,” Jim said. “You can find things that are good to eat and it becomes kind of a game over time to see what you can identify — it be-comes like wildflowers or like birdwatching or anything else you can do outside and become more of an expert.”
“They’re kind of Mother Earth’s offerings, glimpses into her underworld,” Alice said. “They’re like her little gems. And when you find those ones that you’re able to bring home and eat, that’s really magical.”
HUNTERS: Chanterelles, boletus and morels popular mushrooms in western Colorado➤ Continued from page 1D
GRETEL DAUGHERTY/The Daily SentinelMason Cornwell, 8, of Palisade brushes off a chanterelle mushroom as he helps out at the Western Slope Fungophiles’ booth at a recent Downtown Farmers Market.
GRETEL DAUGHERTY/The Daily SentinelChanterelle mushrooms found in the wild of western Colorado could be purchased for $20 a pound at a recent Downtown Farmers Market.
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