MycoRant » mushroom hunting

Mushroom Hunters Should Beware of Cliffs

Philip — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:44:02 +0000

It would seem that when one’s eyes are peeled for any signs of valuable fungi, the probability of walking off of a cliff seem to go up considerably. At least that’s the story out of Italy these days, as the so called “massacre” of mushroom hunters has resulted in 18 deaths, ten of which were caused by accidental falls.

A post at Time .com sheds a slightly humorous light on what is certainly a tragic situation for those involved, with The New Danger-Career: Mushroom Hunting?:

The Guardian reports that there has been an “explosion in the number of edible fungi clinging to tree stumps and undergrowths in northern Italy” and that the increase has resulted in a proportional upsurge in the number of mushroom pickers.

While hunting mushrooms might not seem like the most deadly of missions–after all, eating them is where the real danger is, right?–it’s the location that proves to be the problem. The terrain where the mushrooms are growing is marked with steep hills and cliffs and a number of hunters have fallen to their death.

It is certainly unusual for that many people to die of accidents while foraying for mushrooms. Perhaps they should be more careful to avoid the “one time only” base jumps.

"Hey look! A mushroom!" (Wiki Commons)

Anthony Doerr Strikes it “Rich” With Fungus

Philip — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 23:46:21 +0000

A nice op-ed piece appeared on July 2, 2010 at the website of the New York Times. Not your typical, “this is what it is like on a morel hunt” piece, Anthony Doerr (seemingly writing from McCall, Idaho) gives us glimpse into what a pleasant diversion from the troubles of the world can be had on a simple half-hour stroll in the woods. Looking for mushrooms of course:

During my half-hour stroll, it snows, then hails, then becomes fabulously, luxuriously sunny. I’m watching a wet fox sun himself on a rock, steam rising from his back, when I notice a morel mushroom, like the hat of a little forest gnome, poking up out of leaf litter. Within a minute, I’ve found four more.

It’s nice. It takes you there. It reminds us of why simple things are good and how nature remains tantalizing beautiful and mysterious despite the technological might brought to bear on trying to understand it.

Take a minute to read the whole piece, Getting Rich on Fungus, and enjoy the simple things. It won’t take much time and will be well worth the trip.

Women Make Better Mushroom Hunters?

Philip — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:06:39 +0000

Women Gathering Mushrooms, from 'Travaux des Champs', engraved by Lucien Pissarro (1863-1944) published London 1893 (woodcut)

I do not know how Kevin Lewis of Boston.com found out about a forthcoming Evolution and Human Behavior paper by Pacheco-Cobos, L. et al., “Sex Differences in Mushroom Gathering: Men Expend More Energy to Obtain Equivalent Benefits” but you gotta’ respect him for it. In his column, Uncommon Knowledge, Lewis briefly describes the results of this paper which concludes that:

Using GPS and activity monitors, the researchers found that men were less efficient–they traveled farther, went higher, and exerted more effort than women for the same amount of mushrooms. Women also collected a greater variety of mushrooms from more sites.

Silly men.

Upon further investigation, perhaps the paper is only forthcoming in print, since the paper was published by the journal online on April 5, 2010.

Here is the abstract:

Some of the strongest evidence for sex differences in human cognition relate to spatial abilities, with men traditionally reported to outperform women. Recently, however, such differences have been shown to be task dependent. Supporting the argument that a critical factor selecting for sex differences in spatial abilities during human evolution is likely to have been the division of labor during the Pleistocene, evidence is accumulating that women excel on tasks appropriate to gathering immobile plant resources, while men excel on tasks appropriate to hunting mobile, unpredictable prey. Most research, with the exception of some recent experimental field studies, has been conducted in the laboratory, with little information available on how men and women actually forage under natural conditions. In a first study, we GPS-tracked the foraging pathways of 21 pairs of men and women from an indigenous Mexican community searching for mushrooms in a natural environment. Measures of costs, benefits and general search efficiency were analyzed and related to differences between the two sexes in foraging patterns. Although men and women collected similar quantities of mushrooms, men did so at significantly higher cost. They traveled further, to greater altitudes, and had higher mean heart rates and energy expenditure (kcal). They also collected fewer species and visited fewer collection sites. These findings are consistent with arguments in the literature that differences in spatial ability between the sexes are domain dependent, with women performing better and more readily adopting search strategies appropriate to a gathering lifestyle than men.

Mushrooms and Human Evolution

I know of ethnomycological studies of Wasson, McKenna, and others, but I wonder how much recent effort has been put into studying fungus-human interactions from an evolutionary and behavioral perspective? I decided to snoop around the archives of Evolution and Human Behavior a bit to see what I could find.

According to Does women’s greater fear of snakes and spiders originate in infancy?, “previous studies with adult humans and nonhuman animals revealed more rapid fear learning for spiders and snakes than for mushrooms and flowers.” What a surprise!

That’s about it for this journal. A search for “mushrooms” and related fungal terms did turn up about a dozen hits, but this was the only additional one that had the relevant keywords in an available abstract. I was unable to view the full text of any of the other articles to see if they referenced mushrooms at all.

Mushroom Gathering Women of the Shōtoku Era (1891).

I also searched the journals Evolution, The Journal of Human Evolution, The Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Brian, Behavior and Evolution,

Nothing found really. Although I did find “The evolution of spore size in Agarics: do big mushrooms have big spores?” in The Journal of Evolutionary Biology. (Answer: Seemingly so, but only slightly.)

There doesn’t seem to be much new under the sun in ethnomycology and/or the evolutionary biology of human-fungus interactions. It’s probably a pretty hard subject to make headway in. If I’m wrong, please let me know!

More on this Topic (the men vs. Women thing)

Men are better at map reading, but women are superior at remembering routes, study finds

Women navigate more efficiently than men

Gathering Food (for kids)

Link to scumbag blogger site who lifted the Daily Mail article word-for-word and picture-for-picture without attribution omitted.

Gearing Up For Morel Season

Philip — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 04:13:48 +0000

Morels, caught and cleaned (Michel Ngilen/Flickr)

Word on the web is that people are getting excited about morels. One of the guys MycoRant follows on twitter has mentioned getting his gear ready and making a few preliminary forays to check things out. In fact reports are already starting to come in about successful hunts.

‘Shroom, ‘shroom, ‘shroom: Guess who went morel huntin‘

The weekend hunt yielded 30 pounds, and the wild morels are within an hour-and-a-half’s drive from Dallas-southish, if I can surmise correctly from the clue that he couldn’t resist a stop at the Czech Stop in West. He’s asking $2 an ounce retail.

Morels: Hunting for Wild Mushrooms

April is morel-season here in Missouri, and much of the Midwest. Morels are one of my favorite wild mushrooms. They’re delicious of course, but they also symbolize the beginning of a long stretch of foraging opportunities–chanterelles, oyster mushrooms, blackberries, service berries, elderberries, pawpaws, wild greens, and more.

Early morel mushroom season for 2010?

Sure, the warm weather we have been having has been nice. Maybe a little too nice. Very warm temperatures this early could be good and bad for the upcoming morel season. If temperatures stay on the above normal side and if we receive adequate moisture on and off, we could be in for an early morel mushroom picking season. However, if morels start to pop early and then a string of cold weather hits, it could really mess up the whole process.

Morel mushrooms are a taste worth hunting

Identifying habitat for one of nature’s most delectable wild foods takes detective work — and the location of favorite hot spots must be kept on the downlow. “If too many people know about an area, it gets cleaned out fast,” Stark said. “That’s why mushroom hunters are so secretive.” Successful mushroom hunters also need a little background in dendrology — the study of trees. Pine forests are rarely productive, but certain combinations of other species can create the perfect mix.

Warmer weather to usher in morel season in Neb.

Warmer weather is bringing with it the promise of a time-honored tradition in Nebraska: morel mushroom hunting. Morels begin to appear in mid- to late-April. The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission has a few tips – and some warnings – for those planning to go out on the hunt this year.

For a pretty active community of morel folks who post information on where things are happening check out The Great Morel Forum.

Don’t Eat Wild Mushrooms, California Says

Philip — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:55:39 +0000

Avoid Wild Mushrooms, State Urges! Serious Illness, Death Possible!

Well…yeah, so what? Kind of makes sense considering that California has tried to prevent the sale of wild mushrooms in some locales.

State health officials on Friday reminded Californians that collecting and eating wild mushrooms can cause serious illness and even death. According to the California Poison Control System, 894 cases of mushroom ingestion were reported statewide in 2008.

Some interesting statistics on California mushroom poisoning incidents are included in the body of the article.

CA Health Authorities Issue Wild Mushroom Warning

Regulating the wild mushroom L.A. County halts sales at farmers markets. (Original article does not seems to be available at the LA Times website.

An older article about mushrooms and CA agriculture