On a sunny morning in Foster, just a few steps past the trailhead, the forest floor is brimming with fruiting bodies of fungi. Tiny orange waxcaps and tendril-like spindles, black earth tongues and ribboned turkey tail – the further the path takes us into a trail at Borders Farm Preservation, the more spoils are uncovered. Rhode Island Mycological Society members fan out with their baskets to find and collect mushrooms like Easter eggs (and often equally as colorful) to bring back to the barn for identification.
“You see a whole different world when you’re actually looking. We’ve probably passed by a bunch of mushrooms, and when we walk back we’ll see other ones, which really just speaks to their abundance and how our brains work with pattern recognition,” notes founder Deana Tempest Thomas, who leads monthly Fungal Forays across the state for members to not only satiate their interest in the world of fungi but also to serve an undervalued conservation need.
Throughout the foray, members approach Thomas or confer with each other about their finds, sleuthing over what kind of russula a large specimen may be or discussing the nuances of chanterelles, which pull apart “like string cheese.” Thomas points out the viscid violet cort – her “spark mushroom,” and it’s easy to see why this pale purple lure drew her into the study of mushrooms. As they age, she explains, light spots appear on the cap that give it an outer space look.
Mushrooming is about seeing first, but identifying goes more than skin – or rather, flesh – deep. One step in discerning the difference between boletes, for example, is bruising. Mycologists will cut into a fresh mushroom to see what color it stains, sometimes blue, pink, or brown. This is just one indicator of many in untangling the complex web of some species.
While there are mushrooms – like perennial polypores, which can continue growing for decades – that you wouldn’t want to remove from their habitat, some species “must be picked because they can’t be identified just by looking at them,” explains Thomas. “You have to bring them back home and put them under a microscope or send them for DNA sequencing. In general, it doesn’t harm the fungus to pick it. It’s just the spore body.”
When a cluster of black trumpet mushrooms was spotted, the group descended on the patch. Eyes trained on the gray-brown vase-like fungi, it was like a radio dial easing past the static as several more – easily mistaken for dead leaves and forest detritus moments ago – came into focus. Black trumpets are edible, and many of the members shared that they’re great on pizza or with scrambled eggs. One asked if it’s medicinal, to which Thomas answered, “One of the best benefits is going out and finding them. When you pick something and bring it home to cook, that is really beneficial. All food is medicine, really.”
“On my plant walks, I put the focus on one plant at a time and attendees see how each is important in the bigger picture,” explains Maggie Hatzpanian, an herbalist who makes teas and wellness products through her business, Maggie’s Healing Path. A former nurse, she turned to herbalism to aid with the stress of her demanding career, which was a natural segue into foraging her own ingredients.
Today, Hatzpanian leads Edible and Medicinal Plant Walks at Mount Hope Farm in Bristol and Norman Bird Sanctuary in Middletown – intentionally chosen locale where the properties are stewarded to be wild. “The best place to learn about plants is where they grow,” she explains, noting that the familiarity our ancestors would have had with their natural landscapes has dwindled, as our lives grow ever more interior in modern society, but you don’t need to live in the middle of the woods to learn the art of wildcrafting.
One of Hatzpanian’s favorite plants to work with is commonly perceived as a weed, and it comes in two varieties abundant to the northeast: narrow- and broad-leaf plantain. “The leaves can be used medicinally and for food. They’re delicious. The narrow-leaf variety is thinner and it’s nicer for a salad, or to put on a sandwich. It’s like lettuce, only a lot more nutritious.” It can also be used to craft skincare products or dried and steeped as a tea. Another “weed” many take for granted is dandelion, which she cleverly uses to make fritters with a simple batter of flour, water, spices, and a sprinkle of foraged nettle, among numerous other uses.
Hatzpanian’s focus on using species that are abundant is deliberate. “We’ve encroached on nature quite a bit, so where the wild plants grow is getting smaller and smaller,” she explains. “If you really want to make a tea or medicine or cook with a plant that’s rare, what I recommend is finding something equivalent that’s abundant.” She cites burdock root, a common regional plant, to use in place of Ashwagandha, popular in Ayurvedic medicine, for its adaptogenic properties.
“Let the wild plants grow in your own backyard,” Hatzpanian advises. “Let a few dandelions grow on the edge of your backyard, let some plantains come up through the sidewalk cracks – use it.”
Back at the barn with the mycology crew, members empty their baskets on a rock slab table outside and start sorting into categories. Books are passed around to help indentify mushrooms, and Thomas notes that they’re almost all mycorrhizal species.
“Climate change is in the front of people’s minds right now, but not a lot of people are thinking about fungi and their connections to the trees and environment,” she explains. “Mycorrhizal species are helping trees persist in tough times and get all the nutrients and things they need, but as our trees die off, like our ash trees, what happens to the other species that are connected to them? It’s really important to watch what’s happening now so that as things change, we’ll be able to see those changes.”
Different species of fungi share different relationships with the plants and trees around them, sometimes parasitic, but often mutualistic. Thomas describes how the cells of some mushrooms help rootlets of trees absorb minerals and water, and store carbon in the soil, while the trees give fungi products like sugar – “there’s an exchange that’s happening.”
“They’re very much intertwined in their environment,” Thomas continues. This is also why, when identifying specimens, you’ll often hear mycologists taking note of the trees or habitat surrounding the fungi. Temperature is also a factor. “As the climate changes and we start to have warmer summers, more mild winters, and not as many frost days, it’s really going to change what fungi are able to produce spore bodies.”
Fungi conservation and research is largely underfunded, but awareness initiatives help get the public involved in finding and documenting rare and threatened species. The Fungal Diversity Survey Challenge encourages anyone in northeast North America to become citizen scientists searching for under-documented mushrooms. Participants can send in finds to be DNA sequenced, and the data collected helps scientists uncover the mysteries of the fungal world.
“It’s so important to talk about fungi and include them in our language when we talk about conservation or protecting habitats,” says Thomas, emphasizing the importance of public outreach. “Everyone should be able to enjoy and see these beautiful organisms, but also they can really contribute and make meaningful observations.”
For those new to foraging, never eat a wild plant or mushroom if you aren’t completely certain of what it is – many species have several look-alikes that may be poisonous. Here are a few tips from the pros for starting your wilderness awareness journey:
Don’t Go Alone
“It’s important to always have a human teach you – someone who’s used the plants, who’s eaten the plants,” emphasizes Hatzpanian, as information found online isn’t always reliable or complete. The same goes for mushrooming.
Cross-Referencing
Thomas explains that mushrooms in the wild don’t always “look like the glamor shot from the field guides,” so the best way to familiarize yourself with different species is to visit ones you’ve found often to observe how the color, texture, and size change over time. She also suggests joining iNaturalist, where an online community actively verifies species.
What Not to Pick
Before seeking out a specific plant to forage, Hatzpanian recommends checking the United Plant Savers’ database of medicinal species at risk to avoid harvesting those that are in decline.
Mushroom Weather
Not seeing a lot of fungi? Plan around the weather. “It’s great when we get soaking rains and it’s not windy,” says Thomas, noting that fungi thrive in humid air.
Find products online, as well as details about her four-part Plant Medicine Making Series beginning in October.
RhodeIslandMycologicalSociety.org
Become a member to join monthly forays around the state, and watch for a fall celebration of letting things rot.
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