One of the great things about mycology is the opportunity for amateur naturalists to contribute to citizen science (science conducted with the help of the general public). If you have been wanting to get out and explore the fungal world, all while contributing to the understanding of biodiversity, the fall Mycoblitz (organized by Mycota, NAMA, Fungal Diversity Survey and the Hoosier Mushroom Society) is a great way to get involved! There is an amazing opportunity from Oct 13-22 this year to contribute to a continent wide Mycoblitz! A Mycoblitz is a Bioblitz for fungi. A bioblitz is an intensive period of ecological surveying, and you can help! The aim is to catalogue fungi across the entire continent. There is even the opportunity to send in some of your mushrooms to be genetically sequenced!

There are two way ways to participate:

Photography only:

1. 1. Download iNaturalist app (https://www.inaturalist.org/)

   2. Join the project on iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fall-continental-mycoblitz-2023)

   3. Upload photographs of your observations of fungi. Be sure to take detailed field notes and fill in the project fields. You can do this anywhere you hike or see mushrooms as no picking is required! Be sure to take pictures from multiple angles, and don’t forget to get a shot of the gills!

Collect specimens for sequencing:

1. 1. In addition to your usual collecting preparations you will need to download and print off voucher slips (https://mycomap.com/events/event-slips?event=130).

   2. You will then need to go to land where it is permissible to pick mushrooms, photograph them, and upload the observation to iNaturalist. Resist the temptation to pick the mushroom until you have taken a picture of it in its’ habitat, and taken note of the surrounding trees.

   3. Fill out the voucher label, including the iNaturalist ID number of your observation.This is important so the organizers can match the dried specimens with the photographs and geotagged entry on iNaturalist.

   4. Dry the specimen (until cracker dry!)

   5. Mail to the organizers. You can send in up to 10 specimens for potential sequencing! Very exciting stuff! There are lots of new fungi species just waiting to be discovered. The target genus is Tricholoma, so priority is given to those specimens for sequencing. Email steve@hoosiermushrooms.org when you are ready to send in your collections for further instructions.

All details and instructions can be found here:

https://mycota.com/2023-continental-mycoblitz/

Some information about Voucher Slips:

A voucher slip is generally a paper label with a unique number recording key information about a scientific specimen (the voucher). A corresponding smaller paper label with the matching number can be kept with the specimen as it dries.

The voucher slips for this project look like this:

Vouchering is important as it helps keep specimens organized and records important info. The voucher slips also provide a number for keeping track of specimen in a database. Specimens change as they dry and we forget things so it is important to take note of information about the environment the specimen was found in, and about details of the specimens before they are dried.

For this Mycoblitz fill in the required information (Date, Location, iNat #, Field photos, Nearby trees, Substrate, Habit, Odor, Taste, Species) as best possible, and write any other important observations on the back of the voucher slip. The collector is the person who found the mushroom, and the identifier the person who identified the mushroom. It is ok if you are not sure of the identity, fill in the fields to the best of your ability.

Please feel to reach out if you have any questions about the process.

Jade Hopkins (secretary@vanmyco.com)

Useful Web Resources:

Example of an iNaturalist post for a past mycoblitz: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/179275993

Mycoblitz process and details:

Mycota page: https://mycota.com/2023-continental-mycoblitz/

Link to voucher slips:

https://mycomap.com/events/event-slips?event=130

Collecting specimens for science:

Contains a useful description of how to dry mushroom with a dehydrator:

http://website.nbm-mnb.ca/mycologywebpages/EssaysOnFungi/Collecting_mushrooms_for_scientific_study/Collecting_mushrooms_for_scientific_study.html

Identifying and describing mushrooms:

Where and How to Pick Mushrooms

Web Links

Glossary of  Mycology Terms:

https://www.mushroomexpert.com/glossary.html

Photographs by Jade Hopkins

Many of us think of mushroom season as being in the Fall. While the majority of our dinnertime favourites fruit in Autumn, mushrooms of one kind or another can be found all year round, if you look closely!

In this post, we’ll be looking at some common mushrooms that fruit in the Spring and early Summer here in the Pacific Northwest.

A morel growing in a burn site

1. Morel (Morchella spp.) Many would consider morels the primary goal of Spring mushroom hunting. Morels are prized for their culinary excellence, and of course, their elusiveness. Mushrooms with long-term myccorhizae (plant – fungi relationships) can fruit year after year in the same place, and often associate with a certain species of tree, or thrive in certain biomes, which makes them a bit easier to track down. Morels on the other hand, don’t stick around more than 1 or 2 years in the same place, so even once you find some, you are not likely to find them again. They can be found April through July, typically arising in disturbed areas such as garden beds, and most famously, past wildfire sites.

Caution: Always cook morels thoroughly. Raw morels contain a toxin that can cause gastro-intestinal distress. In addition, many people find consuming alcohol and morels in the same meal also creates GI distress. I frequently enjoy wine with my morel pasta so I know it doesn’t affect everyone. As with all wild mushrooms, proceed with caution, and don’t try a new species the day before going on a hot date or important event! 

Spring Oyster Mushrooms – photo by @forage.vanisle

2. Spring Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) are another Spring favourite. Similar to the cultivated oyster mushroom, but in my opinion, incomparably better. There is a similar species called “Angel Wings” (Pleurotus porrigens) that was up until recently widely considered edible and choice. However, several deaths were linked to it in 2004, causing reconsideration. I have friends who eat them anyways and love them. If you are worried about telling them apart, the biggest clue is: Angel Wings fruit in the Fall, and Spring Oysters fruit in the Spring. There is a species of oyster mushroom that fruits in the fall, but it looks significantly different, having greyish/brown/green colouration. My favourite way to enjoy these is to marinate in garlic, parsley, olive oil, lemon, salt & pepper before gently sauteeing, baking, or grilling and adding to pasta, risotto, or on a burger.

Chicken of the Woods

3. Chicken of the Woods (In our area there are two species, both edible, Laetiporus conifericola & L. gilbertsonii), is one of the most visually striking Spring mushrooms. When young, they really do have the texture of chicken! When old, they have the texture of chalk. They can be found growing on conifers (L. conifericola), and hardwood trees (L. gilbertsonii) living or dead. Harvest younger specimens (leave the babies!) and the outer 2″ of mature specimens, taking the most tender part and leaving the rest to continue releasing spores. Cook well, (I recommend adding them to a risotto), and use caution – some cases of intestinal distress/allergies/bad results have been reported when consumed with alcohol

Young Shaggy Manes, photo courtesy of Rob Dumont

4. Shaggy Mane (Coprinus comatus). These are wonderful for beginners because they are easy to identify and are often seen in Vancouver’s parks, boulevards, university campuses, and other grassy urban areas. I wouldn’t recommend harvesting from urban areas due to the potential of contamination, but for identification practice only. Due to their delicate texture, they aren’t suitable in many recipes you would use button mushrooms, such as omelettes. They require intention and creativity. Harvest young, firm specimens that have not become “inky”. Ensure you identify a patch in all stages to confirm ID. There are mushrooms in this genus with unknown/questionable edibility, namely C. lagopus and C. atramentaria. This chef is amazing, although I haven’t tried this recipe specifically: https://foragerchef.com/parmesan-crusted-shaggy-manes/

Spring King Boletes, photo by Michael Wood, from mykoweb.com

5. Spring King Bolete aka Porcini (Boletus rex-veris). Porcinis are a staple in Italian cuisine. The Spring King was thought to be an early-fruiting variant of Boletus edulis (King Bolete) until 2008, when it achieved its own unique status. E. rex-veris are usually found at high elevations (above 4,000 feet, or a few hundred feet below the snowline) in May and June, dovetailing nicely into King Bolete season, which occurs in late summer and early autumn. According to UBC’s Zoology department: “All Boletus species with a brown cap and a light stem with a network on it (sometimes subtle), and no colour changes to red or blue when cut or with age are considered good edibles (from https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~biodiv/mushroom/B_rex-veris.html).” Network meaning, a fishnet pattern on the stem (note – mushroom stems are technically called a stipe, if we’re being proper). I must confess, I have never found a Spring King Bolete myself, the ones I’ve found have been only in late summer. Despite my lack of personal experience with this one, I think it is a good one to know about when planning a Spring forage.

Thanks for reading! This article is not intended to be an identification guide. Much of the information in this post has been gathered by myself over years of conferring with various books, websites, and resources, and my own personal experience and that of trusted friends. Unless specifically cited, please consider this post to be informed with experiential and “common” knowledge that I hope you will find interesting and inspire you to do your own research. When consuming any wild mushroom for the first time, be 100% certain of the ID, cook well, try a very small amount, do not consume with alcohol, and save one specimen in case you need to go to the emergency room so poison control can identify what you ate (I’m serious).

By Paul Kroeger

Mushroom cultivation changed drastically just when the Vancouver Mycological Society was formed, with the appearance of novel edible species and new culture technologies. During early years of our club new kinds of fresh mushrooms other than white button Agaricus began appearing in markets and a diversity of both wild and cultivated mushrooms was introduced to the consuming public. Today we are used to seeing a great variety of mushrooms offered as food, but before the VMS it was different.

Public concepts of mushrooms were very different in British Columbia before the 1970’s and for most of Vancouver’s population the word “mushroom” meant just cultivated Agaricus buttons or “Money’s Mushrooms”. We were predominated by British people with Anglo-attitudes including mycophobia, a general cultural fear of fungi; but while most wild mushrooms might be pejoratively dubbed “toadstools” the cultivated button mushroom was embraced with great gusto. At one time Vancouver claimed the highest per-capita consumption of button mushrooms in the world.

Mushrooms were mostly thought of then as a compliment to beef dishes. The consumption of mushrooms was found to be linked to the price of beef so when the meat was more affordable mushroom sales increased. If not served with steak, mushrooms might have mostly appeared in the morning fry-up we call an English breakfast.

Agaricus mushrooms were being grown commercially by a few farmers in BC’s Fraser Valley by 1928, including William T. Money in Burnaby. An agreement was reached among Fraser Valley mushroom growers in 1931 for William Money to handle all marketing and distribution of their mushroom produce. Farmers could now concentrate on mushroom growing and Money’s trucks picked up their crop and delivered it to markets. The entire mushroom crop was sold as a fresh product then.

By 1936 production of mushrooms was excessive to fresh demand so Money built a mushroom cannery to process the surplus crop. When Money retired in 1956 the Fraser Valley Mushroom Growers Cooperative Association was formed and the trade name “Money’s Mushrooms” was purchased for mushroom marketing operations. Around 1940 the slogan “What food these morsels be!” was created and used for many years to promote Money’s Mushrooms; consumption of canned or other processed mushrooms often exceeded fresh sales.

Cultivation was focused on strains of Agaricus harvested young in mass production because white tightly unopened little button mushrooms retain better texture and have more appealing appearance after canning. Prior to the canneries mushroom crops were often harvested just as their caps were opening and delivered fresh to market for immediate consumption with dark gills and deep earthy aromas. Modern agriculture’s industrial mass production and processing had made mushrooms bland and boring.

Old advertising mural on Prior Street (photo MDM ) https://vanasitwas.wordpress.com/2016/04/16/what-food-these-morsels-be/

Around 1980 Money’s Mushrooms started a vigorous new marketing campaign with the slogan “Mushrooms make meals Mmmarvelous”; and writer James Barber (The Urban Peasant and author of Fear of Frying) starred in ads and promoted using more fresh mushrooms in different ways and with a greater variety of other foods.  Around this time several different Agaricus cultivar strains were introduced, so in addition to white button mushrooms there were also brown varieties, and eventually the large brown Portobello and Cremini mushrooms we regularly see now.

The importation of much cheaper canned mushrooms from abroad, especially from China, had meant that selling their entire mushroom crop fresh was essential to BC producers.  By 1985 73% of canned mushrooms consumed were imported from overseas and farmers could no longer afford to grow mushrooms for canning.

Table: Agaricus mushroom production in BC: Fresh vs. processed 1975-1985

From Huang , Hsin Chung 1988 The B.C. Mushroom Industry: An analysis of demand and supply. University of British Columbia M.Sc. Thesis. (* wholesale price / lb)

Money’s bag 1990 (photo: Paul Kroeger)

The B.C. Mushroom Marketing Board had been formed in 1966 and was a monopoly which long controlled production and distribution of all mushrooms grown in BC through quotas.  Following the introduction of new species and varieties of cultivated mushrooms in the 1980s the mushroom farming industry was transformed. Now a great diversity of fresh edible mushrooms could compete with the boring but still reliable old standard white Agaricus button of the past.

The first BC Shiitake mushroom farms were started in 1979 utilizing drilled and inoculum-plugged deciduous tree logs. Doctor Theodore Takeuchi pioneered the farming of Shiitake on alder logs in British Columbia.

Dr. Theodore Takeuchi Shiitake farm VMS tour 1983 (photo: Paul Kroeger)

Shiitake Lentinula edodes growing from a log (photo: Paul Kroeger)

Recently developed methods of using artificial substrate mixes formed into tubes, blocks, trays or bags allowed many new kinds of mushrooms to be grown from a variety of materials. Many agricultural wastes or by- products were tested to grow edible fungi. Trials on growing Paddy-straw mushrooms Volvariella volvacea at UBC Agriculture Department showed it wasn’t practical, but discarded materials from the experiment resulted in Paddy-straw mushrooms fruiting from hot steaming large compost heaps at UBC Botanical Gardens and Stanley Park in 1982 and 1983. In 1983 a scheme was hatched to grow Oyster mushrooms on pulp mill waste sludge, a project doomed by association of pulp mills with toxic dioxins.

A more successful and appealing method of mushroom cultivation was developed by Peter Graystone who adapted shipping containers into computer controlled growth modules where Oyster mushrooms grow out of perforated stainless steel vertical trays from alder wood-chip and sawdust in attractive and easily harvested clusters. For many years Peter and his wife Jill introduced people to cultivated gourmet mushrooms at farmers’ markets and our annual VMS shows, and their differently coloured (pink, yellow or blue-grey) Oyster clusters were always a hit.

With introduction of new culture technologies and with a variety of new species available to grow a new hobby was also born, the home cultivation of mushrooms. In early 1970s small scale techniques for growing magic mushrooms were developed for the tropical Psilocybe cubensis and growing “shrooms” became a popular counter-culture hobby. Today most magic mushrooms consumed are cultivated not wild.

Magic Mushrooms Psilocybe cubensis growing from grain trays in 1977 (photo: Stan Czolowski)

Many magic mushroom growers soon branched out to grow edible species, and eventually other medicinal fungi. Home growing of popular edible mushrooms took off with the development of “space-bags”; flexible thin and sterilizable containers that allow creation of kits consisting of formed blocks or logs of substrate inoculated with mushrooms easily grown at home.

The Mushroom Cultivator 1983 by Paul Stamets and Jeff Chilton was a detailed book that described techniques for growing a variety of different mushrooms, and introduced many people to the science and art of growing fungi. Bill Chalmers had already founded his BC business, Western Biologicals, which provided educational workshops and mushroom grow kits and equipment, supplies and cultures for home cultivation enthusiasts in Western Canada for many years.

Bill Chalmers cultivation display at 2010 SVIMS show in Victoria (photo: Paul Kroeger)

Concurrent with an expanding interest in finding and growing various edible and magic mushrooms there was increasing awareness of traditional uses of fungi in folk medicines.  The 1970s had seen a great interest in natural and herbal medicines and traditional medical practices of different cultures. Fungal moulds had already yielded many valuable drugs such as antibiotics, and different larger fungi and mushrooms were being scientifically investigated for interesting chemical compounds that might have medical potential. Many fungi have a long history of use in Chinese Traditional Medicine and are being studied.

Asian Shiitake mushrooms were introduced to the west with many claims of health benefits and thus promoted as a medicine as well as food. Soon a variety of other medicinal fungi were also available to grow at home and incorporate into gardens.

Reishi  or Ling Zhi, the red-lacquered Ganoderma polypores, soon became very popular and highly esteemed in herbal medicine, helped along by a rich folk lore with colourful legends involving mighty Emperors and the great deeds of heroes who were, of course, handsome daring and brave. Most people first heard of Ling Zhi from Gordon Wasson’s 1968 book Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality in which the 8^th chapter, “The Marvellous Herb”, describes some roles of Ganoderma lucidum in Chinese and Japanese history and folklore.

The Caterpillar fungi, Cordyceps species that are parasites on insects, also became popular and have now become the most expensive mushroom at more than $20,000 a kilogram. It’s perhaps not entirely surprising that robbers armed with pepper bear-spray have held up a couple local Chinese apothecary shops for their Cordyceps sinensis (plus some bird’s nests) making off with $30,000 worth in one incident and $40,000 in another.

Much of people’s fascination with Cordyceps probably derives from its intriguing but rather ghoulish lifestyle and these “Zombie fungi “have truly captured the popular imagination. While Caterpillar fungi are not cultivated much locally except as a novelty, the bright orange Cordyceps militaris is grown overseas and now available here fairly cheap in dried form. In nature it grows from Lepidopteran (butterfly or moth) pupae and is considered a rare find.

There are now numerous species of “medicinal” fungi being sold as herbal teas, medicines and nutritional supplements, and many are being incorporated into drinks and foods. What was a very esoteric subject in the early 1970s, mushrooms as medicine, has now become common knowledge and even somewhat of a fad.

In the early 1990s cultures of the Manchurian mushroom or Tea fungus began to circulate, passed from one person to another as starter cultures much as sourdough bread and ginger beer starters used to be shared. The Tea fungus is a mixed culture of various yeasts and bacteria grown in sweetened tea to produce a fermented beverage called Kombucha. Commercial Kombucha products are now available in stores everywhere in a variety of flavours and there are even dedicated Kombucha tea shops and breweries. There is definitely a Kombucha craze right now and a once obscure cultured folk food from Eastern Europe and Eurasia has become big business.

Another medicinal fungus use that comes to us from Eastern Europe and Eurasia is Chaga or Inonotus obliquus, the cinder or clinker conk of birch trees. After it was mentioned in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1966 novel Cancer Ward, this obscure folk medicine has gained increasing notoriety as an alternative cancer treatment as well as a tonic. Scientific research has not kept up with the increasing popularity of Chaga tea and its efficacy as a tonic or for treating cancers in humans remains largely unproven. Excessive consumption of Chaga may actually adversely affect human health due to high oxalate content, with a risk of kidney stone formation and kidney damage. https://www.namyco.org/docs/Oxalates_in_Chaga_a_potential_health_threat_M_Beug.pdf

Chaga is unusual among “medicinal mushrooms” because it’s not really a mushroom or fruit body, but rather a canker formed from the birch tree tissue permeated by mycelium. Oxalates and oxalic acid play vital roles in many wood-decay fungi by weakening and penetrating plant cells through growth of calcium oxalate crystals from mycelial exudates into the wood. Apparently many tree-conk fungi produce oxalates in their mycelium and substrate and continue to do this in artificial culture.

Many available proprietary “medicinal mushroom” preparations actually contain grains grown through with mycelium which are dried and powdered. These products are suspected to be high in oxalates, and have been shown to mostly consist of cereal substrate rather than fungal material. The small amount of fungus present may not even be effective. Several desirable constituents of medicinal mushrooms, such as the triterpinoids called Ganoderic acids found in Reishi, are associated with formation of fruiting bodies and not the mycelium. So, caveat emptor. https://www.nammex.com/redefining-medicinal-mushrooms/

Turkey-tail Trametes versicolor inoculated log at Beaty Museum UBC (photo: Paul Kroeger)

Mycorestoration is the latest catch-word in the mushroom cultivation world. This refers to strategically incorporating fungi into damaged landscapes to restore and enhance ecosystem functioning. The term was introduced and popularized in Paul Stamets’ 2005 book Mycelium Running: How mushrooms can help save the world, along with mycofiltration, mycoforestry, mycoremediation and mycopesticides. But these mycoconcepts are not all new. In 1981 Hellmut Steineck published Pilze im Garten, later published in English as Mushrooms in the Garden 1984, which described how to incorporate edible and interesting mushrooms into home gardens.

The Garden Giant Stropharia rugosoannulata in compost mulch (photo: Paul Kroeger)

Fungi have great potential to clean up chemical or microbial contamination and as bio-control agents to limit weeds and pests or diseases of plants and animals. Mycorrhizal fungi enhance plant growth and vigour and methods of inoculating plants with mycorrhizal fungi are now widely used in agriculture and silviculture.

Some applications of mushroom cultures for bio-control have been developed in BC.  Some years ago inoculum of Chondrostereum purpureum was available to inject into and kill deciduous tree stumps preventing shoot re-growth from removed alder, poplar or maple trees. Oyster mushrooms’ ability to trap and consume minute roundworms may be used to rehabilitate nematode-infested agricultural soils.  Hypholoma fasciculare was tested in BC to limit spread of infection from Armillaria (Honey mushroom) root rot centres in forests.  https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/rsi/research/cextnotes/extnot33.pdf.

Another popular idea is to use mushrooms to digest and break down hydrocarbons from petrochemical contaminated soils, or in absorbent materials after they’re used to sop up oil spills. Some vigorously growing aggressive saprobic fungi such as the Oyster mushrooms Pleurotus have been shown in test trials to happily feed on hydrocarbons reducing them to harmless products. Obviously the goal here is not to produce mushrooms to eat, but to eliminate the petrochemical contamination. Toxic non-hydrocarbon residues may still remain.

Some fungi promise to help repair damage humans wreak upon our environment, but there are challenges in scaling up such applications to a landscape level and successfully integrating them into communities of other organisms we want to establish in damaged sites. We want to avoid the sorts of unforeseen consequences that seem to bedevil many human attempts to manipulate our natural environment. Some fungi can behave like diseases or weeds and introducing novel fungi into complex landscapes could create whole new problems. The concepts of Mycorestoration sound promising but practical applications in larger landscapes remain mostly untested.

Diverse fungi can be grown to satisfy many needs. Home cultivation is a fascinating hobby that offers mushroom enthusiasts greater insight into how fungi grow while yielding crops of fresh mushrooms for food or medicine. The selection of edible mushrooms available in markets has greatly increased over the past few decades, and some are grown on materials that were previously discarded as agricultural or food-processing waste products.

Mushrooms are very new human cultivated foods in our broader history. Human domestication of plants and animals began some twelve thousand to thirteen thousand years ago. The archaeological record shows that by about ten thousand years ago a Neolithic transformation into pastoral and agricultural communities began as populations settled down to raise animals as livestock and grow plant crops. Fungi first appear in the archaeological record several thousand years ago as residues of yeast-fermented grains on vessel shards. One Natufian site with traces of brewing evidence has been dated as older than 13,000 years before present. https://www.history.com/news/oldest-beer-ancient-brewery-invention.

Humans have fermented beverages and leavened cereal foods with yeasts for millennia, but yeasts aren’t mushrooms. Cultivation of mushrooms, the larger fleshy fruiting bodies of what we call macrofungi, is fairly new to us, only a few centuries not millennia. Asian cultures may have started culturing Wood-ear mushrooms Auricularia species and Shiitake Lentinula edodes several centuries ago, but Europeans were slower to innovate and cultivation of Champignon or Agaricus only began in France in the 1700’s. Most other cultivated mushrooms are much newer on the scene, only a few decades!

The four decades since Vancouver Mycological Society formed has witnessed the spread and growth of an entirely new mushroom culture, a veritable mycocultural revolution. Now the VMS can hold occasional banquets (outside mushroom season) at Po Kong vegetarian restaurant and order a variety of delicious dishes featuring more than a dozen different kinds of cultivated mushrooms.

Po Kong “Bamboo pith rolls” Stinkhorn stems stuffed with Shiitake and Enoki (photo: Scott Redhead)

Hot & Sour and Tai Chi soup with Agaricus, Shiitake, Wood-ear and Enokitake (photo: Scott Redhead)

It’s a different world of food from the time of ‘steak and mushrooms’ when only Agaricus buttons were available and canned Money’s Mushrooms were served in Chop Suey houses or found as toppings on pizzas (in 1950s pizza was considered an exciting new exotic ‘foreign food’). Cultivation of a variety of mushrooms has helped diversify modern cuisine and it’s much more interesting now. “What food these morsels be!” indeed; many more mushrooms really do make meals marvellous.

by Paul Kroeger

Vancouver’s mushroom club has always been considered a very special and unique group of enthusiasts, with a distinct blend of interests and skills.Comparison to other regional mushroom clubs and natural history groups has led many to comment that VMS is one of the more interesting and fun bunch of people they’ve ever encountered. Forty years ago some very different interests converged to create an amateur society for the study and appreciation of fungi.This is why Vancouver’s mycological society has its own distinct mushroom culture, so to speak.

Here we’ll look at some interests that brought mycological society people together, and some things that have changed over four decades of VMS.

Science

Science had recently established the Fungi as being a vast group of diverse organisms constituting their own Kingdom, or major limb in the tree of life (Whittaker, R. H. 1969. New concepts of kingdoms of organisms. Science. 163 (3863): 150–60). The fungi had just begun to get the attention they richly deserved, and a keen group of avid naturalists from the Vancouver Natural History Society formed the nucleus around which a mushroom club developed or grew at the end of the 70s, in 1978-1979.

During the 1970s the burgeoning study of ecology had just begun to reveal many vital roles of fungi in forest ecosystems. British Columbia’s universities, government agencies and corporations supported research in mycology because of the importance of fungi to British Columbia’s valuable forest industry.

UBC’s Botany Department mycologist Dr. Robert Bandoni ran the mycology lab that spawned our club’s dedication to what is now called “citizen science”.  Some early Bandoni-Lab students who helped develop the VMS included Andy MacKinnon, Keith Siefert, Richard Summerbell, Gavin Kernaghan, Sharmin Gamiet and Eduardo Jovel. Professor Bandoni especially appreciated the establishment of our club as a welcome relief from the distractions of seasonal flurries of public enquiries about mushrooms; he could now refer all those curious people to us.

We’ve documented the macrofungi of Manning Park for over 30 years, and the mushroom populations of many other areas in BC were first described from VMS field trips. Amateur mycologists have discovered many new mushroom species here and elsewhere.

Dr. Mary Berbee, the current UBC Mycology professor, continues to support amateur contributions to mycology research in BC, and students from UBC are still actively involved with and contribute much to the VMS’s endeavours.

Circa 1980. Left to right: Dick Fraser & sons. Helene & Ole Juul, Paul Kroeger, UBC students Andy MacKinnon and Keith Siefert, Les Wigglesworth. (Photo: A. McKinnon) (photo: Kitsy Fraser)

Counter-Culture

In the 1970s hallucinogenic “Magic Mushrooms” were very popular and high profile, often appearing in the news, and several kinds of wild magic Psilocybe mushrooms were abundant in coastal British Columbia communities. Counter-culture interests in magic mushrooms added many colourful characters to the membership of our early mushroom club.For more on BC magic mushroom history see our webpage essay:  https://www.vanmyco.org/about-mushrooms/psychedelic/brief-history-magic-mushrooms-bc/.

It’s interesting to note that wild magic mushrooms were very common in the 1970s and 1980sand several species grew abundantly as weeds in urban landscaping. Psilocybe stuntzii sometimes formed fairy-rings and arcs or vast swathes in recently installed lawns of newly developed areas and the extensive use of bark mulches in institutional landscaping produced great crops of Psilocybe baeocystis, Psilocybe cyanescens and Psilocybe stuntzii around hospitals, courthouses, police stations and schools. At our annual VMS Mushroom Shows at VanDusen Gardens, throughout the 1980s, we always displayed Psilocybe baeocystis gathered from the grounds by the gardeners.

During the 1990s many alternative uses for wood waste products were developed, and landscaping materials and practices changed. The building booms of the 1960s and 1970s had slowed down, the nature of development changed, and with a lack of new habitats and introduction of watering limitations most of the once abundant weedy urban magic mushrooms disappeared.

The original magic mushroom in Canada, the Liberty Cap or Psilocybe semilanceata, grows in wet pastures. Agricultural fields in the Fraser Valley and in the Fraser delta around Richmond produced abundant crops during the late 1960s into the 1980s, the most productive fields being pasture lands seasonally grazed by cattle or horses. This is no more. Marginal farmland, which was often leased out for grazing because it wasn’t suitable for more intensive agriculture, has been built upon while remaining productive agriculture lands are used differently. Cattle are not often grazed outdoors and both dairy and meat cattle are now mostly raised indoors while fields are used for intensive hay or feed-maize cropping or other types of farming. A little mushroom that was once plentiful, and that changed the cultural landscape of Vancouver and BC, is now scarce.

Picking Liberty Caps in Fraser Valley 1977 (photo: Stan Czolowski)

Cuisine

Cuisine was also changing rapidly when the club was formed with natural fresh, organic and wild foods gaining popularity. Post-war baby-boomers were more affluent and better travelled than previous generations and had developed tastes for cuisine from diverse cultures; many novel and exotic dishes and ingredients were introduced including mushrooms. Until then an abundance of choice edible wild mushrooms had grown in our forests largely unnoticed except by some immigrants from mushroom-loving countries who could enjoy their beloved foods in peace, privately and with little competition.

Then in 1978 a Japanese market for Canadian pine mushrooms (Tricholoma magnivelare or murrillianum) was developed and a gold rush style stampede into the woods began. At the time, Japanese domestic Matsutake (Tricholoma matsutake) had severely declined and even the somewhat less desirable large white North American pine mushroom, known then as Armillaria ponderosa, became a valued and expensive substitute.

It’s said that Canadian pine mushrooms were first discovered by Japanese-Canadian citizens interned during World War II growing near internment camps in Greenwood and Kaslo in the Kootenays, New Denver in Slocan Valley, and near Lillooet and Bridge River. Until the commercial harvest began, multi-generational Japanese Canadian families had continued to revisit their patches every mushroom season. Then suddenly the “White Gold rush” stampede deprived them of a much enjoyed traditional family activity that was one of the few silver linings to brighten the cloud of their dark WWII experience.

Other wild mushrooms were soon being commercially harvested for export to European countries, especially chanterelles and morels. Chanterelles were canned for export to Germany at St. Jean’s Cannery in Nanaimo, and for a time, fresh chanterelles were packed into brine in barrels for export to European canneries. The shipping of brined fresh mushrooms for later canning was stopped after some chanterelles spoiled in transit, causing illness from heat-stable Staphylococcus bacterial entero-toxins in canned products.

Various dried BC mushrooms also became available in our markets and were exported abroad. Boletes and morels are especially suited to being sold dried, but other local mushrooms such as chanterelles and lobster mushrooms have also become widely available in dried form. Processing of wild mushrooms to produce high quality dried products is described in this video from Royal Roads University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1V0jMV-J7Y.

BC canned chanterelles for export to Germany. St. Jean’s cannery, Nanaimo 1985 (photo P. Kroeger)

As foreign markets for BC wild mushrooms opened, local interest and demand also increased and wild harvested mushrooms started to appear in many local produce stores and farmers’ markets.

Canadian restaurants also began to incorporate more wild mushrooms into their menus. Unfortunately not all chefs were familiar with safe preparation of mushrooms and this resulted in a couple of in famous mass poisonings in Vancouver restaurants. In one case in 1987 improperly bottled chanterelles caused severe botulism poisoning in 11 people; in another incident in1991 fresh morels served raw at a banquet made 77 people sick.

Landscapes Change

Landscapes have changed in south western British Columbia over forty years of VMS activities; mushrooming was different at the beginning.  Large scale industrial clear-cut logging of the 1960s through the 1980s had resulted in extensive logging road systems throughout forested landscapes giving access to many productive forestremnants not yet logged but doomed soon to be. Within a couple hours drive of Vancouver were many forests abounding in interesting and edible mushrooms, though one might have to face thundering great loaded logging trucks barrelling toward you to get there. In the 1980s public sentiment began to change and protests against industrial destruction of old-growth forests began.

Field trips for the VMS were much more frequent in early years because there were many more places a fairly large group of us could go for a casual mushroom walk. Many parks, trails and areas of accessible forest land were a short driving time from the city, and even on weekends were not filled with other people. Fewer people were interested in mushrooms at first, so impressive fruiting of fungi could be seen in abundance. But as interest in mushrooms grew over the years, many areas near the city were regularly picked over for edibles, and the other fungi and their habitats (and mycologists) were increasingly disturbed.

The population of Greater or Metro Vancouver has more than doubled over the past 40 years (from 1,169,831 in 1981 to 2,463,431 in 2016) and human pressure on natural areas near the city is tremendous. Many parks, trails and recreation areas are packed with visitors every weekend and large numbers of users along with inadequate care, maintenance and repairs has deteriorated access trails making them unsafe, and degraded or damaged the natural environment people come to enjoy. People seem to “love it to death”.

VMS used to have many day trips to areas in the upper Fraser Valley and places around Hope but now it takes twice as long to get half as far. Heading east on the highway past the Port Mann bridge would take you through miles and miles of agricultural land because much of the Fraser Valley was composed of distinct small towns and cities surrounded by farms and undeveloped land. Now urban development has filled much of the valley, suburbs have grown like giant slime-moulds absorbing rural lands as their streaming plasmodial paved road systems carry more propagules to colonize yet more land. Getting out of the city now almost means travelling beyond Hope.

Mushrooms change

Some once-common popular edible mushrooms have become scarce near Vancouver but others have appeared as new and then spread within the growing city. In 1983 mini-parks were created in many parts of the city and the horticultural Rhododendron “Anna Rose Whitney” was planted out, soon to produce from their root-balls enormous crops of mushrooms identified as Stropharia riparia (a native species) at the time. This mushroom was evidently introduced from abroad and found its way into the horticultural trade to hitchhike with transported nursery stock. It’s now called Leratiomyces percevalii, a less attractive name than that of the delightfully rhyming native’s Stropharia riparia. Whatever its name might be, this introduced species is now a widespread common weed mushroom in gardens here and around the world.

In 1984 a new species of mushroom was found growing abundantly in the UBC Botanical Gardens, a peculiar little Hypholoma that arises from buried sclerotia or tubers. We named it Hypholoma tuberosum Redhead & Kroeger and soon after publication it was reported from the USA, Japan, France, Germany, Belgium and Australia. The species was found to grow wild in a bog in New South Wales Australia where sedge peat was mined for use in the nursery industry, and appears to have found its way around the world from there hitchhiking on the commercial plant trade.

 Another import probably also from Australia is Stropharia aurantiaca, now called Leratiomyces ceres, which first showed up in Vancouver in 1974 in landscaping of the newly built Arbutus Village development. This beautiful and distinctive little orange- capped mushroom has over the past decade become a common weed mushroom in wood chip mulches here, much as it now grows elsewhere around the world.

Of course, the alien imported mushroom of greatest importance and concern right now is the Death Cap, or deadly Amanita phalloides. The VMS has been central to the discovery and documentation of this dangerous mushroom in Canada. After it was found growing in Seattle Washington we put out warnings and asked VMS members to look out for it and to spread the word it might be here. In 1997 it was indeed found in BC, under sweet chestnut trees at Lake Errock near Mission. We’ve been able to document its spreading occurrence and distribution, and have helped warn the public of this new threat to public health. For more on BC death caps see our webpage: https://www.vanmyco.org/about-mushrooms/poisonous/amanita-phalloides/.

New types of mushroom poisoning have also been recognized over the past forty years. In 1992, Amanita smithiana was first shown to be poisonous, causing kidney failure when eaten mistaken for pine mushrooms. https://www.vanmyco.org/about-mushrooms/poisonous/amanita-smithiana/. Several species once considered safe edible have been implicated in causing sickness in recent years.  See https://www.vanmyco.org/about-mushrooms/poisonous/ Anomalous Edible Mushroom Poisonings & Symptoms table.

Names Change

I’ve discussed several changes in the world of mushrooms over the last 40 years, but perhaps the most challenging change for enthusiasts is in what we name our mushrooms. When VMS started pine mushrooms were Armillaria ponderosa, honey mushrooms were Armillariella rather than Armillaria, hedgehogs were Dentinum repandum instead of Hydnum and hawks wings were Hydnum not Sarcodon. As DNA technology is applied to look at different fungi, more and more species native to North America are being recognized as distinct from Old World species whose names we’ve been using. New understanding of evolutionary relationships among fungi is also changing the genus names into which species are placed and new genera are being proposed, so the mushroom names change yet again!

And So Do Books

In earlier years North American mycologists relied heavily on European literature to find names for our New World mushrooms. Many amateur mycologists used mushroom books from Europe, often translated into English, which were commonly illustrated with beautiful reproductions of watercolour paintings.  A very popular and useful early book was Collins Guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools by Lange and Hora, a 1963 English translation of the Danish 1961 Svampeflora with beautiful little colour paintings of an interesting variety of fungi.

There were a mere handful of North American mushroom guide books available at first, and most had just black and white photographs. Standard home-grown North American mushroom books you might find on a shelf of early members of VMS include: The  Savory Wild Mushroom 1962 (1971) by McKenny and Stuntz of Seattle; Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms of Canada 1962 by Groves and published by Agriculture Canada; Mushrooms of North America 1972 by Orson Miller, an early all-colour book; The Mushroom Hunter’s Field Guide 1958(1963) by Alexander Smith or its colour 1980 version; and the colour illustrated A Field Guide to Western Mushrooms 1975 also by Alexander Smith.

Certain new books came out around the time of VMS’s beginnings that covered many more species than any previous field guides. Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora first came out in 1979 and soon was the go-to guide for devoted mushroomers. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms 1981 by Gary Lincoff was very popular for those who like to use comparison with photos to identify fungi.

For more serious identifiers there were How to Know the Gilled Mushrooms 1979 and How to Know the Non-gilled Mushrooms 1981, both by Smith, Smith and Weber in The Pictured Keys Nature Series of Wm. C. Brown Publishers. For the extremely serious identifier there was also Keys to Agarics and Boleti (Polyporales, Boletales, Agaricales, Russulales) 1983 by Moser with 400 pages of keys, printed in tiny font, to thousands of mushroom species.

As interest in mushrooms has grown over the past decades, so has the number and variety of mushroom books. Many regional field guides have come out recently, and books about various other aspects such as mushroom cultivation or uses of fungi especially as food or medicine, or monographs dealing with just particular groups of mushrooms are now numerous. The revolution in computer technologies has also given us many novel internet resources, so looking up any unfamiliar mushroom name now takes only a few moments spent at a keyboard or gadget.

The VMS was formed just when fungi were exploding into public consciousness. Our club has thrived in an environment where mushrooms and other fungi are conspicuous, varied and around to be found for much of the year. Using fungi for food or medicine, might be the first reason most people join a mushroom club but the general of fungi soon hooks them.

Studying the vast and fascinating, but previously oft overlooked realm of fungi has been a frontier of exploration, innovation and discovery. There are “so many mushrooms but such little time”. For four decades the Vancouver Mycological Society has been along for a great exciting ride, and it’s been fun.

By Paul Kroeger

Vancouver Mycological Society (VMS) was formed in 1979 by mushroom enthusiasts who mostly shared a common interest in eating wild fungi. When the society was formed part of its stated purpose was “To assist in educating the public in the collection and identification of fungi, with emphasis on the safe separation of edible from toxic fungi.”

Wild mushrooms have gained great popularity and are commercially collected and sold in an unregulated environment and usually without preparation instructions.  Reports of adverse reactions after consuming commercially marketed wild mushrooms are not uncommon. Certain mushrooms that are widely considered edible species appear repeatedly in reports of adverse reactions from mushroom ingestion. See Table 3 p.11: Anomalous edible mushroom poisoning.

Mushroom clubs such as the Vancouver Mycological Society play an important role in informing the public of health hazards associated with eating wild mushrooms and how to avoid them. In this discussion we address some issues surrounding wild mushrooms gathered and distributed as culinary commodities and especially aspects of quality control that effect human health. Similar issues appear in the current “medicinal mushroom” trade but are not addressed here, unless the fungus is also popular for food as well, an example being the Hericium species.

There are a variety of reasons why mushrooms considered edible may cause illness in consumers. Some of these causes and contributing factors are discussed below:

Some species are toxic unless cooked. This is especially relevant with the popular morel mushrooms. In 1991 raw fresh morels were served in a salad at a banquet held in a major Vancouver hotel, and 77 (16%) of the 483 people attending reported illness. Many edible mushrooms contain small amounts of hydrazines and other volatile compounds that are toxic or carcinogenic but are eliminated by cooking, others have heat-sensitive hemolytic proteins.

It should be noted that wild mushrooms offered for sale may have microbial contamination from the environment in which they grow, and from the handling, storage and transportation involved in harvest and marketing. Cooking these mushrooms is thus also an important food hygiene practice.

 Over-mature and poorly stored mushrooms may contain micro-organisms of incipient decay and are often implicated in adverse reactions. Many people involved in marketing mushrooms may not recognize signs of aging and decay in unfamiliar species, or may be reluctant to lose profit by discarding aging product.

Mushrooms can grow in habitats that have a history of human disturbance and mushrooms collected in such areas may contain heavy metals or other chemical contaminants from agricultural, industrial, transportation or other human activities. Certain saprobe fungi such as oyster mushrooms are even used in attempts to remediate contaminated sites.

Wild mushrooms are biochemical factories that create and contain very complex and largely unknown chemistry. It is well known, though,  that many compounds found in fungi have strong antibiotic effects, and it’s suspected that consuming even well known edible species in excess or when improperly prepared can cause gastrointestinal distress by disrupting a person’s natural  intestinal  biota.

Improperly preserved wild mushrooms can cause food-borne illness from microbial toxins. Mushrooms are very high risk for home canning because of their neutral pH and close contact with soil microbes such as Botulinum bacteria. Safe canning requires acidification and thorough pressure processing. Other preservation techniques such as brining and storing under oil have also resulted in serious illnesses.

Several wild mushrooms classified as edible in popular guide books are implicated in multiple reports of adverse reactions among consumers. Some incidents involve factors already discussed such as inadequate cooking, over-consumption or microbial contamination; but others don’t and are attributed to individual sensitivities or intolerances that might be present in a significant portion of the population.  For this reason certain species could be considered as posing too high a risk to consumer health to be safely marketed as edible mushrooms, examples include all Leccinum species or rough-stemmed boletes, and Phaeolepiota aurea.

Wild mushrooms offered for sale in markets have occasionally been misidentified. For example, there have been sporadic observations of the false morel Gyromitra esculenta being represented as true morels! This is potentially serious because false morels contain toxic hydrazines, compounds responsible for both short term acute poisonings and for chronic effects as known carcinogens.

Itinerant or opportunistic pickers of commercial wild mushrooms may have limited mycological knowledge or experience, and the consumer might have even less familiarity with mushrooms. There are currently no requirements ensuring that marketed wild mushrooms are accurately identified. Certain edible species may require considerable mycological expertise to accurately distinguish from problematic look-alikes and should not be marketed unless identified by an experienced mycologist.

There is currently no means of certifying that wild mushrooms offered for sale are correctly identified by individuals with adequate mycological knowledge and experience. Jurisdictions in many other areas have certification programs for wild mushrooms that require inspection of marketed material by individuals certified as having mushroom identification qualifications.

Sometimes marketed wild mushrooms are referred to only by a common name without the technical or scientific binomial. There is currently no standardized system of common names for mushrooms in North America, so to avoid confusion the technical scientific name is important in identifying and labelling marketed mushrooms. It’s desirable to have a standardized list of approved market mushrooms with standardized common names linked to the scientific binomials.

Some ethical and conservation considerations

Mushroom harvest is prohibited in protected park areas such as National, Provincial Regional and most municipal parks and all Ecological Reserves.  Special Management areas and Community forest lands may have restrictions on harvest of non timber forest products (NTFPs) including mushrooms.

Mushrooms growing on First Nations lands are resources belonging to First Nations people. People not of First Nations communities must obtain permission to access those resources.

Certain edible wild mushrooms may become considered “Species at Risk” if declines in their populations or distribution are demonstrated. Continued exploitation of these species would be inappropriate.

Some suggested Guidelines for the commercial wild mushroom market

• Only those species of wild mushrooms known to be safe and tolerated by most people should be sold. A list of approved market species would be desirable with standardized common names linked to scientific binomial names.
  
  
• A monitoring or inspection and certification system should be established to ensure that marketed wild mushrooms are wholesome and safe for public consumption. This would ensure the mushroom species is approved as safe for consumption, and that the product is neither decayed nor contaminated.
• To achieve oversight of the commercial wild mushroom industry it will be necessary to have qualified knowledgeable personnel trained to identify approved market mushrooms, possible look-alike species and known poisonous mushrooms. These individuals should also be trained to assess the freshness and suitability for consumption of samples of approved market mushrooms, and to instruct others about identification and quality control of mushrooms.
  
  
• Recommended standards of packaging and labelling should be developed for commercial wild mushrooms. Packaging should be appropriate for reducing potentially harmful spoilage and contamination, for example by requiring wrappings to allow air exchange preventing anaerobic conditions. Labels should clearly identify the mushroom or mushrooms contained and advise cooking before consuming.
  
  
• Basic information on wild mushroom food safety practices should be made available to those dealing with wild mushrooms where produce is marketed and in the restaurant industry. Guidelines for safe mushroom selection, handling, storage and preparation should be developed and disseminated as printed materials or educational courses.
  
  
• The need to cook wild mushrooms before eating should always be clearly communicated to the consumer. “Cook before Eating” labels or stickers are recommended.
  
  
• Sellers and vendors of wild mushrooms should be instructed to be diligent in trimming or culling over-aged or deteriorating mushrooms.

It must be pointed out that attempting to impose mandatory regulatory controls over the wild mushroom trade would probably be challenging and possibly resented; harvest and distribution of mushrooms has developed in an informal atmosphere and operates largely as a grey economy.

Harvest and field buying of mushrooms is a seasonal activity which takes place throughout much of BC around small communities where it provides an irregular but often important source of income for rural populations.

Below are listed some British Columbia mushrooms considered to be good edibles and which are candidates for approved status for commercial trade. Many of these species may make their way to farmers’ market stalls, produce stores or restaurants.

Please note that while some are considered choice and safe for most of us to eat, others can cause problems for certain people or if not properly prepared. These problematic species are indicated with an asterisk* and three types, Chickens of the woods (2 species of Laetiporus) and Lobster mushrooms (Hypomyces lactifluorum), are especially problematic. The Laetiporus were excluded because they have failed to achieve popularity, but Lobster mushrooms are retained because they have.

All wild mushrooms should be cooked before eating.

Table 1: List of potential market wild mushrooms for British Columbia

How mushroom species were selected as potential market mushrooms

The mushrooms in the preceding list were selected from a larger list of mushrooms, see Table 2 p.7: Some Edible Wild Mushrooms of British Columbia, which are species classified as edible in popular field guides or reported as being sold in British Columbia. Species were eliminated from this larger list if they present problems in ensuring a potential consumer’s health.

Several of these have been recorded as causing negative reactions in sufficient numbers of people to be considered too high risk for a commercial market. See Table 3 p. 11 Anomalous Edible Mushroom Poisoning for a summary of frequently implicated “Edible” mushrooms.

Several saprobic mushrooms are excluded from the approved listing because they often grow in habitats associated with human disturbance and may present a higher than acceptable possibility of environmental contamination. Most are minor edibles not highly valued. Examples of such wild saprobes are Agaricus, Chlorophyllum and Coprinus. See Table 4 p. 12: Edible mushrooms with common names and life style or trophic mode.

 When saprobe mushroom species which might come from contaminated sites are retained on the approved list, it may be desirable to require some documentation of safe provenance. This would apply to such mushrooms as Lepista, Lyophyllum,  Morchella and Pleurotus.

Certain edible mushrooms present a challenge for most people to reliably identify and may closely resemble toxic species. Examples of mushrooms that present identification challenges are Agaricus, Armillaria, Chlorophyllum, Clitopilus, Lepista and Lyophyllum.

Table 2: Some Edible Wild Mushrooms of British Columbia

An asterix (*) following the name indicates mushrooms associated with human illness in mushroom poisoning reports.  Please see also Table 3 p. 11: Anomalous Edible Mushroom Poisonings.

Wild mushroom species that may be considered too high risk to be marketed Commercially or that may need special standards or labelling

 Armillaria species, Honey mushrooms: Frequently implicated with problems if over-mature and/or under-cooked. Accurate identification is critical because some dangerous mushrooms have similar growth habit and occur in the same habitat. These should be considered as high risk of causing illness.

Hypomyces lactifluorum, Lobster mushroom: Frequently implicated with problems if over-mature and/or under-cooked or with excessive or repeated consumption. Individual intolerance is apparent in some people. This is already a well established market mushroom sold fresh and dried. Lobster mushrooms sold fresh should have labels directing they be cooked before eating.

Laetiporus species, Chickens of the woods:  Usually marketed when over-mature and tough and unpalatable. Frequently causes gastrointestinal distress especially if undercooked. Only the very youngest and softest parts are edible and desirable. These should be considered as high risk of causing illness.

Leccinum species, rough stemmed boletes: Many cases of gastrointestinal upset are reported for various species. Individual intolerance may be common. The entire genus should be considered high risk of causing illness especially when fresh.

Morchella species sold fresh should have labels directing they be cooked before eating.

Phaeolepiota aurea, Gold-cap: Individual intolerance is frequent. These should be considered as high risk of causing illness.

Pleurocybella porrigens, Angel wings: This species was implicated in fatal poisonings in Japan. These should be considered as high risk of causing illness.

Tricholoma equestre or Tricholoma flavovirens, Man on horseback: In France these were implicated in fatal poisonings. These should be considered as high risk of causing illness.

Edible BC mushroom species that may have sustainability and conservation concerns

Craterellus cornucopioides is known only from a small area on southern Vancouver Island. Imported material apparently from California and Oregon appears in our markets at times.

Gomphus clavatus seems rare in BC and has been red-listed in many parts of Europe due to decline or extirpation. An old-growth associated mushroom.

 Grifola frondusus is only known in BC from Vancouver, Victoria and Greenwood in the Boundary district.

Hericium erinaceus is only known from the Salish Sea and southern Vancouver Island on Garry oak and broadleaf maple.

Polyozellus atrolazulinus and Polyozellus marymargaretae are recently recognized old-growth associated species with unknown distribution and range. Previously both were known as Polyozellus multiplex considered rather uncommon and locally abundant in only very few areas.

Table 3: Anomalous Edible Mushroom Poisoning

Table 4: Some edible mushrooms with common names and life style or trophic mode

Table 5: Scientific names of BC’s edible mushrooms

 Here are current names for BC edible fungi, from Kroeger & Berch 2017 with some additions. Names conform to Index Fungorum. Scientific names for fungi are rapidly changing as genetic studies reveal how different species are related or not. Many mushrooms we knew by familiar European names are being recognized as new species native to this region.

A Bibliography for Commercial wild mushrooms

Acker & K. Russell (1986) Harvesting wild edible mushrooms in Washington: An issue paper. The Edible Mushroom Task Group. Washington.

J.F. Ammirati (1985) Poisonous Mushrooms of the Northern United States and Canada. University of Minnesota Press.

Anonymous (1994) Workshop results- Pine Mushroom Task Force. Province of British Columbia, Ministry of Forests, Victoria.

Anonymous (2003) Abstracts: The third international workshop on edible mycorrhizal mushrooms. Victoria, B.C.

D. Arora (1986) Mushrooms Demystified. Ten Speed Press.

D. Arora (1991) All That The Rain Promises and More… Ten Speed Press.

D. Arora (2008) California porcini: three new taxa, observations on their harvest, and the tragedy of no commons. Economic Botany 62 (3): 356-375.

A. Bazzicalupo et al. (2018) White paper on strategies to reduce risks and expand appreciation of foraged wild mushrooms. (https://www.namyco.org/docs/EdiblePoisonousReport20170914.pdf).

BC Ministry of Forests and Range(2010) Harvesting edible wild mushrooms in BC. https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/publications/00028/harvest.htm (Jul 12, 2017).

D.R. Benjamin (1995) Mushrooms: Poisons and Panaceas. A Handbook for Naturalists, Mycologists and Physicians. W.H. Freeman and Company.

S. M. Berch and A.M. Wiensczyk (2001) Ecological description and classification of some Pine mushroom (Tricholoma magnivelare) habitat in British Columbia. Ministry of Forests, Research Program, Research Report No. 19. Victoria.

S. M. Berch and W. Cocksedge (2003) Commercially important wild mushrooms and fungi of British Columbia: What the buyers are buying. Province of British Columbia, Ministry of Forests, Victoria.

M. Beug. (2016). Mushroom poisoning in North America, summary of voluntary reporting and news articles for 2015 and 2016. http://www.namyco.org/toxicology_reports.php (May 7, 2017).

M. Beug, M. Shaw, & K. Cochran (2006). Thirty-plus years of mushroom poisoning: Summary of the approximately 2,000 reports in the NAMA case registry. McIlvainea 16:47-68.

E. J. H. Corner (1966) A Monograph of Cantharelloid Fungi. Oxford University Press.

T. Ehlers, S. Berch and R. Winder (2010) Pacific Golden Chanterelle (Cantharellus formosus) Ecology and Productivity in the Nimpkish Valley, Northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Draft Report

T. Ehlers & T. Hobby (2010) The chanterelle mushroom harvest on northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia: Factors relating to successful commercial development. BC Journal of Ecosystems and Management 11:72-83.

F.B.M. Consulting Ent. (1989) The harvesting of edible wild mushrooms in British Columbia. In: Integrated Resources Branch, B.C.F.S., editor. BC Ministry of Forests, Victoria BC.

S. Gamiet, H. Redenour and F. Philpot (1998). An overview of pine mushrooms in the Skeena-Bulkley Region. Northwest Institute for Bioregional Research, Smithers, B.C.

N. de Geus (ed.), S.A. Redhead & B. Callan (1992) Wild mushroom harvesting discussion session minutes. Province of British Columbia, Ministry of Forests, Victoria.

N. de Geus (ed.) (1995) Summary of public response: Pine Mushroom Task Force recommendations. Province of British Columbia, Ministry of Forests, Victoria.

N. de Geus (1995) Botanical forest products in British Columbia: An overview. Province of British Columbia, Ministry of Forests, Victoria.

N. de Geus, Scott Redhead and Brenda Callan (1992) Wild mushroom harvesting discussion session minutes. Province of British Columbia, Ministry of Forests, Victoria.

N. de Geus & S. Berch (1997) Tne Pine Mushroom industry in British Columbia. In Mycology in sustainable development; expanding concepts, vanishing borders. Ed. M. Palm & I. Capela. 55-67

J. Ginns (2017) Polypores of British Columbia (Fungi: Basidiomycota). Prov. B.C. Victoria. B.C. Tech. Rep. 104.

D. Hosford, D. Pilz, R. Molina and M. Amaranthus (1997) Ecology and management of the commercially harvested American Matsutake mushroom. USDA-FS PNW-GTR-412. Portland.

J.M. Kranabetter and P. Kroeger (2001) Ectomycorrhizal mushroom response to partial cutting in a western hemlock/western redcedar forest. Can. J. For. Res. 31: 978–987.

J. M. Kranabetter, J. Friesen, S. Gamiet & P. Kroeger (2005) Ectomycorrhizal mushroom distribution by stand age in western hemlock-lodgepole pine forests of northwestern British Columbia. Can. J. For. Res. 35: 1527-1539.

J. M. Kranabetter, H. Williams & J. Morin (2009) Ecological descriptions of Pacific golden chanterelle (Cantharellus formosus) habitat and estimates of its extent in Haida Gwaii. B.C. Journal of Ecosystems and Management. 10: 59-67.

J. M. Kranabetter, R. Trowbridge, A. Macadam, D. McLennan and J. Friesen (2002). Ecological descriptions of pine mushroom (Tricholoma magnivelare) habitat and estimates of its extent in northwestern British Columbia. For. Ecol. Manage. 158: 249–261.

P.Kroeger (1991). ‘Yumm,’ said the police chief. Mushroom The Journal 34.

P. Kroeger & S. Berch (2017) Macrofungus species of British Columbia. Prov. B.C. Victoria. B.C. Tech. Rep. 108.

P. Kroeger, B. Kendrick, O. Ceska & C. Roberts (2012). The Outer Spores: Mushrooms of Haida Gwaii. Mycologue Publications and Haida Gwaii Museum.

L. Liegel, D. Pilz, & T. Love (1998). The MAB Mushroom Study: Background and concerns. In Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. Special Report Number 9: 3-7.

L. Liegel, D. Pilz, T. Love & E. Jones(1998). Integrating biological, socioeconomic, and managerial methods and results in the MAB Mushroom Study. In Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. Special Report Number 9: 26-33.

G. Lincoff and D.H. Mitchel (1977) Toxic and Hallucinogenic Mushroom Poisoning: A Handbook for Physicians and Mushroom Hunters. Van Nostrand Reinhold Co.

T. Love, E. Jones & L. Liegel (1998) Valuing the temperature rainforest: Wild mushrooming on the Olympic Peninsula Biosphere Reserve. In Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. Special Report Number 9: 16-25.

D. Malloch (1976) Morels: A gourmet’s delight. Agriculture Canada, Publication 1581.

M. McKenny, D. Stuntz and J. Ammirati (1994) The New Wild Savory Mushroom. Douglas and McIntyre.

H. McLean, S. Peck, G. Eng, R. Mathias, W. Black& G. Morgan (1987). Epidemiologic notes and reports restaurant-associated botulism from mushrooms bottled in-house — Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 36:103.

R. Molina, T. O’Dell, D. Luoma, M. Amaranthus, M. Castellano and K. Russell (1993) Biology, ecology, and social aspects of wild edible mushrooms in the forests of the Pacific Northwest: A preface to managing commercial harvest. USDA-FS PNW-GTR-309 Portland.

O. Persson and B. Mossberg (1997) The Chanterelle Book. Ten Speed Press Berkeley USA

M. J. Peterson, R. Outerbridge and John Dennis (2000) Chanterelle productivity on burned and unburned regeneration sites in the vicinity of Skidegate Lake on Moresby Island. Province of British Columbia Ministry of Forests.

D. Pilz, F.D. Brodie, S. Alexander & R. Molina (1998). Relative value of chanterelles and timber as commercial forest products. In Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. Special Report Number 9: 14-15.

D. Pilz, R. Molina, & L. Liegel (1998). Biological productivity of chanterelle mushrooms in and near the Olympic Peninsula Biosphere Reserve. In Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. Special Report Number 9: 8-13.

D. Pilz, L. Norvell, E. Danell and R. Molina (2003) Ecology and management of commercially harvested chanterelle mushrooms. USDA-FS PNW-GTR-576 Portland.

D. Pilz, R. Molina, and J. Mayo (2006) Effects of thinning young forests on chanterelle mushroom production. Journal of Forestry 104:9–14.

D. Pilz, R. McLain, S. Alexander, L. Villareal-Ruiz, S. Berch, T. Wurz, C. Parks, E. McFarlane, B. Baker, R. Molina and J. Smith (2007) Ecology and Management of Morels Harvested from the Forests of Western North America. USDA-FS PNW-GTR-710 Portland.

S.A. Redhead (1997) The Pine Mushroom industry in Canada and the United States: Why it exists and where it is going. In Mycology in sustainable development; expanding concepts, vanishing borders. Ed. M. Palm & I. Capela. 15-54

S.A. Redhead, L. Norvell and E. Danell (1997) Cantharellus formosus and the Pacific golden Chanterelle harvest in Western North America. Mycotaxon 65: 285-322.

J. Duane Sept (2006) Common Mushrooms of the Northwest. Calypso Press.

S. Tedder, D. Mitchell and R. Farran (2000) Seeing the Forest Beneath the trees: The Social and Economic Potential of Non-timber Forest Products and Services in the Queen Charlotte Islands/ Haida Gwaii. Province of British Columbia, Ministry of Forests, Victoria.

R. Trowbridge, A. Macadam, and M. Kranabetter (1999). Ecological description and classification of highly productive pine mushroom sites in northwestern British Columbia. Northwest Institute for Bioregional Research, Smithers, B.C.

S. Trudell and J. Ammirati (2009) Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest. Timber Press.

N.J. Turner and P.von Aderkas 2009. The North American Guide to Common Poisonous Plants and Mushrooms. Timber Press.

Photographs