Mushrooms are among nature’s most mysterious plants. They pop up all over the place in the fall, and as quickly as they arise, they are gone.
Fall is the best time to view and photograph mushrooms as nature photographers are attracted to their remarkable colour and variation.
There are also many people who love to gather and eat mushrooms. Some choice edible mushrooms, such as the highly sought after morel, grow in the spring, but they are not as a plentiful and more difficult to find.
Some people harvest wild mushrooms. Indeed, in British Columbia, mushroom harvesters can make a good amount of money by picking shitake mushrooms, a valuable delicacy in Japan. Japanese shitake mushroom importers pay top dollar for British Columbia shitake mushrooms.
A recent story about Timmins-born miner Sean Ryan illustrates the point. Ryan, a geologist with Kidd Creek for many years, decided he needed a change in career, so he left Kidd Creek and moved with his wife to the Yukon where they plan to survive by harvesting shitake and other choice mushrooms for export to the Japanese market. But as it frequently happens in mining, while Ryan was focused on the ground looking for edible mushrooms, he noticed a substance emerging in the ground that was remarkably like gold. After staking the area, samples showed that it was indeed gold.
In 2012, thanks to his searching for mushrooms, Sean Ryan and his gold discovery earned him the coveted Miner of the Year Award by the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada.
Ontario also offers some choice edible mushroom. But be cautious! Know what you are doing, because misidentifying mushrooms is easy to do as some very innocent looking mushrooms like the amanita virosa (also known as the destroying angel) resemble at various stages of its development the store bought white cap mushrooms consumers are familiar with.
Almost all of the mushrooms in the amanita family are harmful. They are often referred to as toadstools and are larger and more colourful than most with large bright red or yellow caps, often with white dots. They are perfect for photographing. Just don’t eat them.
A good guide for beginner mushroom gatherers is the Audubon Guide to Mushrooms.
General rule of thumb: if you can’t identify them, don’t eat them. If they look too much like a potentially harmful mushroom to pick them, photograph them and practice your passion for mushrooms at the grocery store.
You can enhance your knowledge and appreciation of mushrooms or fungi by joining mycological societies, such as the Toronto Mycological Society.
For a list of mycological societies in Canada, click here.
