news story / By Heidi Walters

Mushrooming?

Whew.

But damn. If you happened to be at that mushroom fair on Sunday, and you are a rookie at even the simplest of mushroom identification, two things might have made you queasy: The realization that there are a gabillion people interested in mushrooms, and the fact that there are a gabillion kinds of mushrooms. Combine the two, and you get a whole lot of potential mushroom eaters potentially gobbling bad fungi.

Not everyone at the mushroom fair was after edible info. Some — like the group of post-teen slouchies who sauntered in holding tiny, pointy-capped mushrooms in their hands then beelined to the “Let us identify your mushroom” table, saying, “Let’s go see if they’re psychedelic!” — had enhanced-eating notions. And others wanted to know what the funny/cute/gross thing was that had popped up in their yard overnight after the big rain. In fact, said mycological society president Joann Olson, this year’s fair had a record attendance: 1,500 people by 2:30 p.m., and an hour and a half to go. The last record had been 1,100 people in a day.

A lot of people were signing up to join the mycological society, as well — so many that the group ran out of forms. Mycological society member Vanessa Laird, standing by a bin of different edibles, said joining the society was a great way to learn your mushrooms, plus gain some ethical and legal savvy.

“There’s a lot of places out there you can’t go picking mushrooms,” said Laird. “State and national parks, private property. I’ve seen people illegally picking mushrooms, destroying the environment, taking more than they need.”

If you go mushroom picking, you need a permit — one per individual — to pick on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management sells a limited number of commercial picking permits to gather the tan oak mushroom — matsutake — in certain areas. The BLM also gives out free personal-use permits. Both permits come with maps and regulations. For instance, commercial pickers cannot harvest in the Headwaters Reserve, the Samoa Peninsula, wilderness or proposed wilderness areas or certain other protected places. And, the matsutakes have to be hand-picked — no rakes or leaf-blowers or other disruptive tools. Personal pickers also must gather their mushrooms delicately, and they have to cut them one inch from the cap or straight through the middle — that’s to make sure personal permittees don’t try to sell their finds, because buyers don’t want cut mushrooms.

Similar rules apply on the national forest. Last week by phone, Bill Rice, Six Rivers National Forest’s district ranger on the Lower Trinity District, said already some folks had been cited and fined for picking mushrooms improperly. One guy was dinged $175 for picking 10 tans (matsutakes) in the nearby Orleans district recently. He didn’t have a commercial permit, but he had left the shank — the stem — intact. The law enforcement officer, who had pulled him over on a dirt road to check for permits, also made him cut the shank off every single one of the mushrooms.

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