Mushrooms and Kids

Kids make terrific mushroom hunters: naturally curious, highly energetic, low to the ground, and remarkably discerning — sometimes more so than adults. Mystery writer Lia Matera relates this story of her seven-year-old son:

Brendan loves your book [Mushrooms Demystified]; he spends hours looking through it, memorizing all the mushrooms, and he draws pictures of them which he assembles into little mushroom books of his own. One day we were in a bakery with paintings of different mushrooms on the walls. I pointed to a beautiful white, ringed mushroom and said, “Brendan, that’s one you don’t want to eat; it’s called the destroying angel.” Brendan studied it carefully and said, “No it isn’t, it’s a white matsutake.” Well, I’d never seen a white matsutake, but when we checked the book, he was right!

Except for toddlers in the grazing stage, children are unlikely to eat something unless they know it’s edible, especially if they are also taught what is poisonous. Yet most North Americans are terrified by the prospect of their children taking an interest in or, even worse, handling wild mushrooms. (Fact: relatively few mushrooms are poisonous, and they can only cause harm if ingested.) Typically, the only kind of contact that is encouraged is the kicking and stomping of “toadstools” that sprout on lawns. Grown males can often be seen leading the charge. Even adults who have taken mushroom classes are frequently reluctant to share their newfound knowledge with their offspring — a case of projection, not protection, if you ask me. (In a society that delegitimizes adult feelings on the one hand and encourages, even exalts, parental concern for innocents on the other, it is not surprising that adults commonly project their own fears onto their children, in this case, a lingering residue of distrust from their fungophobic upbringing.) Contrast this climate of overbearing concern with Valentina Wasson’s description of her childhood in Russia (from Mushrooms, Russia, and History; New York: Pantheon 1957):

What a delight it was to ramble through the clean, fragrant woods, filling our baskets. [When I was almost eight and my sister was nearly seven]…we were already proficient mushroom gatherers, and we must have begun our apprenticeship long before. Our mother was even more solicitous about her brood than most mothers, yet it never occurred to her to poison our young minds with warnings about “toadstools.” All Russians know the mushrooms, not by dint of study as the mycologists do, but as part of our ancient heritage, imbibed with our mother’s milk…Tanya and I, and all our little playmates, made ourselves useful, when in the country, by gathering various kinds of mushrooms and bringing them home in childish rivalry and glee to the kitchen. When we were naughty, our mother would punish us by forbidding us to go mushrooming.

Many immigrants to North America raised their children as mushroom hunters. Italian-American John Feci (see this page) remembers when he was ten:

My mother was the expert in the family. She knew I could cover a lot of ground, so she would encourage me to go mushroom hunting. I’d bring home a bucket of boletes and get a lot of praise. I loved finding them, but I also did it for the recognition, to get in her good graces because she was a tough mom.

Brandi Lyn Scates with a shaggy parasol (Lepiota rachodes). “What could be more thrilling and fulfilling than finding a nice big mushroom in the woods?” asks lepiota-lover Grainger Hunt (below).

Biologist Grainger Hunt, a lepiota lover and father of three, amplifies the theme of children making themselves useful:

How easily we forget that we evolved as hunters and gatherers, and that our bodies are marvelous machines designed for those purposes. Kids were once indispensable to the survival of families. When they brought home their first bird or mushroom, it was a major event, their mothers got really excited because it meant the kid had become a producer — not of trivial things, but of food. Now so many kids lack a vital role, they question their relevancy because they have no function in the family. I think we should send them out mushroom hunting. Can you imagine the excitement kids feel when told to find five pounds of luscious lepiotas for dinner? Can you imagine the sense of meaning, and purpose, that gives them? They get to be on a mission, to learn about the world in a challenging and purposeful way that fits perfectly with the way they’re designed. I mean, what could be more thrilling and fulfilling than finding a nice big mushroom in the woods?

What, indeed? North America will remain a continent of fungophobes until its children pursue mushrooms as freely and fearlessly as do their Russian counterparts.

Boletes or Chanterelles?

From a picking perspective, since that’s what I do, it’s obviously chanterelles, because I’ve picked them in more areas than I’ll ever pick boletes. When boletes come to mind it’s always Boletus edulis. As far as being a boletivore, I’m one of the most avid. But I would have to say chanterelles because you can pick them in more areas, and because of their beauty. But then again, boletes have a tremendous beauty about them. There’s never been a bolete I didn’t like. But then again, there’s never been a chanterelle I despised either. So that will have to do it: chanterelles when they’re available and boletes when they’re available.

—Mohammed Ismail

Chanterelles. It’s the color and the fruitiness. I like boletes very much, but my mouth waters for chanterelles.

—Greg Wright

Chanterelles.

—Harold Furuta