by Greg Marley
Times change. America slowly came awake to a curiosity about, and an appreciation for, more diverse and traditional foods including the world of wild or “exotic” mushrooms. The decades following the 1960s were a time when many Americans recognized that the homogenization of the melting pot came with the devastating loss of individual and cultural identity. Many sought to reconnect with their ethnic roots before cultural memory was lost forever. One of the most visible, enduring, and endearing aspects of culture is culinary and revolves around the dining table—that bastion of conveyed love, social connection, and nurturing. Though not everyone has family dining traditions they’re looking to brag about, almost all will tell you that the memories of dinnertime traditions are enduring and powerful. Rediscovered food roots have resulted in the rapid proliferation of ethnic restaurants, cookbooks, and cooking classes. Once we began to expand our food horizons to include traditional ethnic dishes, we needed the proper ethnic ingredients. Many European and Asian dishes included the use of “exotic” mushrooms far removed from our pale supermarket variety, and adventurous chefs and family cooks required a source for wild and exotic mushrooms. This need could be filled by importing, but what about the wild mushrooms surrounding us in forest, field, and garden? In the 1970s America began to turn away from Wonder Bread and to look toward nature as source of healthy and natural food we had almost left behind.
The movement to rediscover our ethnic roots through diet also coincided with a period when many people were re-evaluating their overall relationship with nature and the environment. The term “environment” took on entirely new meaning through the 1970s as we struggled to address the effects of 100 years of industrialization upon it. The “back to the land” movement was born of the 1960s urban and suburban disillusionment and a search for deeper meaning and reconnection with the natural world. For some, myself included, the appreciation of nature included, in late adolescence, a growing interest in wild foods and foraging (thank Euell Gibbons). My growing fascination with wild mushrooms was further fueled by the possibility of filling a basket and cooking pot with great edibles. The two streams, connecting to ethnic heritage and recommitting to a connection with nature, are embodied in the vision of the Slow Food movement, which emerged out of France and Italy in the 1990s. The Slow Food movement celebrates regional and ethnic traditions related to food production and preparation, and a strong desire to support regional and sustainable food practices. The movement has further energized people to integrate the use of local foods, including mushrooms. More Americans are rediscovering a family history of wild mushrooming or creating their own traditions of incorporating mushrooms into their lives as a way to develop a relationship with nature and as a source of interesting, healthy, and desirable food. No mushroom in America embodies this better than the morel.
The morel has become the most widely collected and consumed wild mushroom in America, and because it draws such broad appeal from people in all walks of life, it may represent a change agent, a harbinger of a broader acceptance of wild mushrooms in the United States. Morels are not just a “blue state” food consumed in the glittering urban kitchens of the educated, sophisticated, and elite. No way. They are found and collected in abundance in the Midwest and mountainous Southeast by rural and country folk who might bring their mushroom bags into the woods along with their turkey call and shotgun.
Everyone who collects mushrooms for the table is responsible for learning the skills needed for accurate identification in order to avoid the risk of poisoning. Those skills are vital as you sift through 2,000–3,000 species in search of the great edibles. For me, however, learning the more intimate stories of mushrooms and their impact on us and the forest environment broadened my appreciation and deepened my relationship with them. When I first started mushrooming, my interest was drawn to understanding their diversity, but my curiosity quickly focused on the interrelationships of fungi in their environment as I studied botany and ecology in college during the 1970s. My gastronomic interests also drove me to focus on the edible mushrooms, to learn about cooking with them, and then to direct my interest toward growing exotic mushrooms at home. Over the past ten years my fascination with the medicinal and health-affirming potential of mushrooms became a passion and then a business.
The web of interconnectedness between mushrooms and the rest of nature seems limitless. Consider, for example, an obscure dark gray finger of a mushroom known as the goldenthread cordyceps, Cordyceps ophioglossoides. It is a parasite with a yellowish stem and yellow root-like mycelia that connect it to its host, a type of false truffle called Elaphomyces that is buried in the soil. The false truffle lives in a complex symbiotic relationship with the roots of the hemlock tree, and those roots also may be connected symbiotically with several other species of fungi, which can include the porcini, Boletus edulis, and the destroying angel, Amanita bisporigera.
The interrelationships don’t end there, however. The northern flying squirrel is a rarely seen nocturnal rodent prone to spending the day in tree cavity nests. It is attracted to the strong scent of the false truffle as the truffle begins to mature and digs up the nut-like fruit in the night. Along with other fungi, truffles make up a dominant part of the squirrel’s diet for much of the year. The spores of the false truffle are unusually thick-walled, enabling them to pass unscathed through the digestive tract of the squirrels. The well-nourished rodent then deposits the spores in its feces, where the spores are more likely to find a new host tree than if they were dependent on the truffle alone for dispersal. In short, a common squirrel that we rarely see due to its nocturnal lifestyle feeds primarily on truffles and other underground fungi that we also almost never see unless we spot the elusive parasitic cordyceps easing its obscure head above the forest floor. The truffles rely on animals to unearth and consume their fruit as the only way to distribute their spores, and the forest trees require root associations with fungi like the truffles in order to obtain vital nutrients for growth.
The interrelationships don’t end there, either. As the hemlock declines, it becomes prey to fungi that attack and decay the heartwood of the trunk. The rot-softened wood provides an opening to woodpeckers for feeding and nest cavity excavation. Who else, beside the woodpeckers, do you suppose uses these cavities as homes? The shy nocturnal flying squirrel.
This kind of story—and the natural connections it illustrates—brings mushrooms to life for me. Stories make the abstract real, build familiarity, and transform understanding from a vague recognition of separate elements seen on the forest floor to an inkling of the dynamic and intricate web of relationships that move in choreographed dance steps in a natural world we rarely glimpse. These are the kinds of mushroom stories you will find on the pages ahead.
As America travels the path toward embracing mushrooms, toward mycophilia, we will need to develop (or recall) a language and stories about mushrooms as we invite them more deeply into our lives. There are signs that this is already under way. Our growing fondness for morels is one sign. Where forty years ago there were few mushroom field guides available, there are now many that cover specific regions of the country and some that represent the entire United States. Web sites celebrating and offering education about mushrooms are springing up like, well, like mushrooms. Another sign of movement to embrace mushrooms, though not as uplifting, is the increase in the number of mushroom-related poisonings reported in this country. Mycophilic cultures have far more people poisoned by mushrooms each year largely due to the fact they have so many more people eating wild mushrooms. An inevitable, though unfortunate, result of America’s growing interest in wild edible mushrooms will be the increase in these poisoning cases.
All of these signs of interest will grow as we develop our relationship with the world of mushrooms. For the moment, I invite you to share in a few of the stories about those denizens of the forest floor.
PART I
MUSHROOMS AND CULTURE
1
PASSIONATE ABOUT MUSHROOMS
If you think you are a mushroom, jump into the basket.
RUSSIAN PROVERB
J uly wafts in with warm winds, sultry days, cool nights, and the gentle, persistent rain the Russian people refer to as mushroom rain. On the evening train back to the city, someone alert to the mood of the forest sits with a basket of mushrooms in his lap, the top covered carefully with cheesecloth to protect the precious cargo from debris, drying breezes, and, of course, prying eyes. Anyone able to get a glimpse into the basket might see the colorful mushroom caps of syroezhkas (Russula), some gruzd (milk-caps, Lactarius) and, if the hunter was lucky or skilled, perhaps an early beliy grib (white mushroom, Boletus edulis), the most prized of the Russian mushrooms. Although the hunter is fatigued from a long-day’s tramp in the forest, his eyes have a gleam of triumph, the satisfaction of a hunt long awaited, carefully executed, and successful. The mushrooms are here!
Word quickly spreads through neighborhoods, bars, workplaces, and the street. Workers of all backgrounds, education, and professions wait impatiently for the day they can throw off the shackles of the job and head to the forest with their families, boots, pails, and baskets. In smaller towns, businesses are shuttered and local officials close the municipal offices. Older couples and babushkas look to spend as many days as possible in the forest; this is a chance to earn extra income needed to supplement meager or nonexistent pensions. It is the season of za gribami—looking for mushrooms—and Russians of every stripe heed the call of razh—mushroom passion—to troop through the woods in an annual ritual of seeking, collecting, eating, and preserving the year’s fungal bounty.
Eager mushroomers, clad in layers of clothing and stout footwear to protect their bodies from branches, bugs, and weather, arise before dawn to catch a train or a bus to the forest. They’ve learned to get into the forest ahead of the crowd or else there may be little left as the hordes move through. Family members arrive at a favored area, often where they have gathered annually their whole lives and perhaps where their parents and grandparents gathered before them. Families quickly separate into smaller groups and individuals to scour pine and aspen glades efficiently for their favorite mushrooms. Children, sharp of eye and low to the ground, learn at the knees of parents and grandparents to recognize the desired mushrooms and the ones to avoid. They fill their own baskets under the watchful eye of the family expert, usually the matriarch, who holds the knowledge about which species to keep and which to discard.
There is a bumper sticker sometimes seen along the coast of California, “The worst day of surfing is still better than the best day at work.” For Slavic people, including expatriates, change the surfing to mushrooming and you’d have a good start on a regional slogan. The Slavs go mushrooming like Americans go to malls—compulsively, often, and with gusto.
A gifted Russian painter of mushrooms and passionate mushroomer, Alexander (Sasha) Viazmensky, wrote about mushroom hunting in Russia on the occasion of his first visit to the U.S. “The feeling I experience towards woods and towards mushrooms is nothing else but love. And if there is love, there is jealousy around, directed to everyone who also loves the object of your love. When mushroom hunters run into each other in the woods they silently curse at each other, although exchanging pleasantries out loud.”1 Tempers flare, and the territorial imperative can fuel violence when these otherwise unmarked boundaries are crossed and treasured territory invaded. During the height of the season, thousands of people will flock to the forests and, by the weekend’s close, it will be as if a broom has swept all the edible species from the forest. Again according to Viazmensky, “In Russia, mushroom hunting is the favorite activity of enormous numbers of people. Many more people are mushroom picking than, for example, fishing. Children, men and women of all ages are indulging in mushroom hunting. American Mushroomers! What happy people you are because you are so few.”2
Mushrooms are deeply woven into the culture and traditions of this region of the world. Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Rumania, Belarus—all have a strong cultural and historical connection to the forest and mushrooms. These traditions inform the habits and skills that people need to seek mushrooms, but the passion runs deeper. Cabins and homes for rent in the countryside almost invariably mention mushroom hunting as a local draw, and even on Internet dating sites people include mushroom hunting as a hobby and something they seek in a potential mate.
Mushrooms are an inseparable part of the Slavic diet, and few meals are without their complement when mushrooms are available. Pickled mushrooms dominate salads and dried or brined mushrooms are used in cooking soups and a variety of other dishes. Many regional cuisines include a traditional Christmas Eve mushroom soup, and each year, dried forest mushrooms are set aside carefully so there will be enough for the holiday soup in a lean mushroom season. These traditions, like many, were carried over to America by families of emigrating Slavs. A quick Internet search yields many mentions of and recipes for Christmas Eve mushroom soup coming from Polish, Slovakian, and other Slavic heritages. A Slovak woman from Ohio named Jane included this comment with her recipe: “This was passed down from generation to generation. I don’t have a recipe for this soup, but I will try to estimate the portions.” She went on to explain some of the history of the soup in her family. “My grandmother used to use mushrooms my grandfather and dad would pick up in the woods. I believe they called them sheephead. We can’t find the mushrooms for sale and are afraid to go and look for them in the woods. We don’t know the good from the bad.”3
Her comments echo those of many second- and third-generation immigrants who work to hold onto mushroom-related traditions but have lost access to the knowledge and the confidence to collect wild mushrooms even where they are available. Removed from a regular use of mushrooms and in a new country, they seek to retain the tradition, especially during those special holidays and at family gatherings.
The importance of mushrooms in the lives of Slavic people isn’t seen only in the cuisine, however. Many ancient Slavic folk tales feature mushrooms and forest mushroom characters in the story line. In lands where traditional life was forest-based, the Taiga, that great northern belt of forest, became the setting of many folk and fairytales. Perhaps the best-known folk tales in Russia involve Baba Yaga, the ancient crone who guards the gate between this world and the underworld, between mortals and fairies. In some stories she is a benign, though frightening, force and in others she is malevolent, known to eat the unwary and to decorate her forest home with the bones of her victims.
As a child, I learned numbers and the ABCs through songs, stories, and games. I used many of the same stories with my son. In Russia, toddlers learn the names and characters of mushrooms through stories, poetry, and songs. One well-known nursery rhyme involves the mushroom king, Borovik, calling his mushroom troops into battle. The story exists in many variations, but they all serve as a way to teach children.
The Mushrooms Go to War
Borovik, mushroom white,
Colonel of the mushroom might,
Sitting under a large oak
Looking at his mushroom folk
Summoned them, ordered them
To go to war.
We can’t go, said the ink-caps,
Our foot’s too small for the steps.
We don’t have to go to war.
We can’t go, said the belianki,
We are noble white dvorianki.
We don’t have to go to war.
We can’t go, said the toadstools,
We are brigands, we are crooks.
We don’t have to go to war.
I can’t go, said the morel.
I am too old and not too well.
I don’t have to go to war.
Said the russet ryzhiki,
We are simple muzhiki.
We don’t have to go to war.
We’ll go, cried the groozd,
We are brave and willing.
> We shall go to war
And make a great killing.4
Many Russian tales feature food and drinks that are given or exchanged and that are sometimes magical or intended for the dead. Mushrooms often are possessed with such magic, and illustrations for the fairy tales often show Baba Yaga amid the bright red fly agaric and other mushrooms. The tales often are populated with a mixture of woodland creatures and children. In one, Baba Yaga captures and intends to eat a hedgehog sitting atop a mushroom and eating another mushroom. The hedgehog convinces Baba Yaga that he can be more useful in other ways, and changes into a small boy who leads the hag to a magical sunflower.5 According to one Slavic researcher, “In another legend, Baba-Yaga puts the hero in touch with magic creatures (spirits), Lesovik and Borovik, who live under a mushroom and provide the hero with magical gifts which show him the way to reach his goal.”6 Whether depicted as benign or malevolent, Baba Yaga often appeared with mushrooms.
