Moving past the concrete barrier marked “CLOSED,” Patrick Leacock and I slipped and slided our way into the woods, quiet except for the hissing cars and occasional woodpecker. Species of maple, oak, poplar, elm, and wild cherry were present, as well as last year’s leaves in the duff below our feet. There were plenty of tree snags and fallen logs decomposing. It’s important to know species, as fungi have woody associates, meaning they identify and grow on or with particular trees, or “mothers” as I am wont to say. Some species prefer dying or dead wood, others are parasitic on the living ones. One can’t get away from tree identification when one is interested in looking for fungi. And that is what Patrick and I were doing on this dank cold day at the beginning of spring.
There were no footsteps of other humans, though plenty from deer. The sky was filled with naked branches, with only the maples flowering red. It was also not warm enough for fruiting mushrooms, just “the rotters,” as Patrick called them. Mushrooms are deeply relational and emerge from a complex living (or dying) context. They don’t “just happen.” As Michael Kuo, professional amateur mycologist, author of Mushrooms of the Midwest, and creator of mushroomexpert.com, writes: “It should be obvious that understanding mushrooms, therefore, depends on understanding the whole picture.”
There aren’t a lot of jobs for mycologists. Fungi have a pivotal role in soil and plant health, including moisture regulation, carbon storage, and nutrient cycling in grasslands, forests, parklands, and backyards. And let us not forget their role as deathmongers. They are the only decomposers who can break down lignin (the woody structure of the tree), and they play a large role in fermentation and wellness, and as foods themselves. This makes one think that perhaps mycology would be greatly valued. But most of us weren’t taught about fungi (or lichens or mosses) in our biology or earth science classes. Or we were taught to be phobic of them.
