We’re getting on for that time of year (wouldn’t it be a good joke on me if this post went missing until spring) when the leaves start dropping off and ol’ Mother Nature tells us it might be a good idea to collect an acorn or two to see us through the winter. We city types normally scoff at most of what Mama Nature has to say, but this gathering impulse is a pretty hard one to shake. Just look at all the gathering being done on Bond Street, and we’re supposed to be in a recession.
The spirit of the season is particularly persuasive for those of us who’ve spent time living in the sticks but who now roam the asphalt planes. At some point or other, memories of the country, or more specifically of us in the country, expand a bit (blame it on inflation) and, in harmony with the autumn harvest, begin to bear fruit. Thus, the six weeks you spent canoeing and napping on a lake in the Berkshires magically blossoms into three winters of trading beaver pelts and mushing a dog team around the sights and attractions on King William Island. Naturally so much time spent in the wilderness yields an impressive wealth of survival knowledge, and any urban survivalist worth his salt will be only too glad to demonstrate his skills should circumstances become suitably dire. I’ve always harbored the pleasant delusion of being able to find food in any landscape, and have passed many happy hours in quiet contemplation of the satisfaction that would surely come from being the last person in London after some unforeseen natural event has wiped out the city’s food supply. Everyone will have legged it to Paris or Manchester, and there I’d be, nestled contentedly in the hollow of an old oak, snacking on something or other from nature’s bounty and reciting several of Wordsworth’s choicer lines from a small pocket edition I’d lifted from one of the evacuees. It would certainly be a fine life. My ticket to this dream world comes courtesy of my mushroom foraging skills, and it’s just that topic I intend to discuss today.
Now for those of you looking to get into the mushroom game, the best place to start is at a reputable outfitters, where you’ll be able to weigh yourself down with all the necessary paraphernalia and at least look the part. You didn’t think you’d just be able to pick up a mushroom guide and saunter willy-nilly into the wild did you? Ha ha!! Hee hee!! Good one.
For order’s sake, let’s begin at the bottom (south) and work our way up (north). Any fire breathing mycologist will tell you that the key to successful foraging is in one’s choice of footwear, which should be sturdy, waterproof, and spacious enough to conceal at least a fifth of brandy. It’s worth noting that Wellingtons have been the boot of choice for years and since I see no reason to reinvent the wheel, let’s move on to trousers. Here matters are left to one’s style and personal taste, assuming one has any. I favour moss green corduroy as I feel they give me a)protection from thorns and nettles and b)camouflage, which helps me sneak up on the mushrooms undetected, thereby allowing me to catch them with their defences down.
What you choose to wear above your trousers matters very little – especially to me – so feel free to express your individuality from the waist up, only try to make your choice temperature appropriate. The number of accounts I’ve heard having to do with under-dressed mushroom hunters dying of exposure on Wimbledon Common is staggering, and they (the accounts) make for cloudy reading on an otherwise sunny day, so beware.
An absolutely vital component to the forager’s outfit is his mushroom knife, which is as threatening looking a contraption as you’re likely to see used on flora, and perhaps the greatest case of overkill in the cutlery world. These knives consist of a straight handle, usually wooden, into which folds a three-inch-long serrated blade that curves like a comma to a dreadfully sharp point. Jutting out from the bottom of this implement is a small flat brush that the owner’s manual tells you is for removing mud and other forest flotsam from the mushrooms you’ve picked, but in reality serves nearly as much purpose as a handbrake on the space shuttle and probably sees about as much use. Some knives also come equipped with a set of tweezers slotted into the wood, though I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what for. It’s been my experience that very few things in nature require precision tweezing, and I suspect the delicate tool’s presence in the knife owes itself to either a small joke or a large mixup at the factory. Whatever the case may be, the blade itself is invaluable, and is second in importance only to the funghist’s great friend, that master of mycology, that Sherlock of shroomology, I mean of course the forager’s field guide.
Most people hold the opinion that mushrooms are dangerous, and it turns out they (the people) are right. I learnt this piece of information from Roger Phillips most recent guide,
Mushrooms. I also learnt that while thousands of mushrooms are inedible, only fifty or so are actually poisonous, which was a statistic I found oddly comforting until I discovered that 47 of the 50 grow unimpeded in my garden. How I envy those friends in Scotland who can hardly fling a sheep without hitting a patch of porcinis or dislodging a lovely little chanterelle. “Whatever are we to do with all these delicious and incredibly valuable mushrooms?” they like to ask at quiet moments. Well, I have a couple of suggestions, and they both involve sticking them where the sun don’t shine (the cellar and the larder). As for my horde, they may be deadly, but at least they have delightful names. Take my favourite, the Destroying Angel, as an example. Here we have a delicate white specimen that rises elegantly from the ground on a slender stem and is topped by a smooth campanulate cap. It’s a beauty, but let’s remember that beauty often comes at a price, in this case, and here I quote Mr. Phillips,
A delay of 6 to 24 hours between ingestion and the onset of symptoms, during which time the cells of the liver and kidneys are attacked. The next stage is one of prolonged and violent vomiting and diarrhea accompanied by severe abdominal pains lasting for a day or more.
But hold on, there’s good news:
Typically this is followed by an apparent recovery, when the victim may be released from hospital or thin their ordeal over,” (wait, “think?”) but death results from kidney or liver failure within a few days. (Oh.)
The Angel’s in the same family (
Amanita) as another killer, also with an evocative name, albeit one with a somewhat less sympathetic bent, the Death Cap. Sounds like something Agatha Christie might have dreamt up, doesn’t it. You’ve got to hand it to the more villainous mushrooms, they’ve really got terrific names. The safe varieties also sport interesting monikers, but they tend to be on the cutesy side, like Fairy Ring Champignon, Wood Blewit, and Giant Puffball. The names aren’t without their charm, I suppose, but they lack some of the pizzazz of something like the Panthercup, or the Livid Pinkgill. Now those are some handles you can really get your teeth into (though I wouldn’t recommend it). Another personal favourite is the Poisonpie since it sounds somehow ironic and reminds me of something my uncle Herman used to call his sixth wife, Elspeth. Mr. Phillips is thorough enough to tell us that the Poisonpie, or genus
Hebeloma, “should be avoided,” which might sound a bit obvious, but as a warning is no less valuable for being so. Also, it might be of some interest to note that my uncle circulated a similar piece of advice in connection to Elspeth shortly before embarking on his seventh, and third-to-last, marriage to the lovely Joanne, a cocktail waitress from Sioux City. He really was quite the guy.
But enough about that. After all, we’re here to discuss mushrooms, and so I come to the real reason for cursorily studying mycology: impressing your friends. We’ve all enjoyed fantasies of strolling along a wooded path one fine afternoon, our senses wrapped in the heady scent of pine, our bodies delicately caressed by the ethereal shafts of light that stream through the trees. A bird can usually be heard chirping somewhere in the middle distance. Your companions are entranced, and just when they feel they couldn’t get any closer to nature, you bend down, casually pluck a mushroom from the soil, and carefully examine it for a moment. “
Leviticus Edulis,” you say nonchalantly, handing the specimen to the nearest friend. “Good for the liver. Of course it’s often mistaken for
Apavictus Horribilus, of the Incidious Avenger, which will make your spleen dissolve, so you’ve got to know what to look for. But don’t worry,” you say, chuckling at your friends’ alarm, “that’s a
Leviticus alright. Costs 60 bucks an ounce down in Chinatown.” It’s delightful moments like these that make tolerating one’s obnoxious friends worthwhile.
Now the more astute among you, or at least those of you who own a field guide, might have detected that I fabricated, or “made up,” the abovementioned mushrooms’ names. Good for you. You’ve ascertained my strategy. One of the things I noticed on my numerous forays into funghi country is that virtually all mushrooms look exactly alike and bear almost no resemblance to their pictures in the various field guides. Apparently mushrooms’ appearances change a good deal as they mature, so using a photo of a juvenile Xerula Radicata to identify a senior citizen of the same species would be about as useful as circulating a baby picture of Jimmy Hoffa at the next Teamsters’ Charity Treasure Hunt. Sure, correct identifications
can be made, but you’d need to take spore prints and cross reference genus lists, and who has the patience to do that? I mean why bother? Just make something up, and if your friends don’t have sense enough to heave behind the nearest tree a mushroom that might annihilate their spleens, well they probably deserve an evening of two of, shall we say, ritual purification. If, on the other hand, it’s eating you’re after, then the sensible course of action is obvious: just go to the market, like a normal person!
