The Fungus AmongUs

Guess who just got home from a treasure hunt? The recent warm temperatures and copious amounts of rain have or are currently making mushrooms. Let's go find 'em!

Is it delicious? Can it kill you? Can some of them help the body fight cancer or regenerate nerves? No matter how you look at them, mushrooms are pretty amazing, and make great subjects for wildlife photos and sometimes a delicious addition to unique home-cooked meals. But eating the wrong one can kill you, and from what I’ve read, it’s a bad way to go.

*****On this hike, we’ll hope to identify some of the fungus amongus, but please don’t think that particpating will make you an expert. If you want to forage for wild foods, I fully encourage you, but you’ve GOT to put in a lot of hours of study, or… you could die. Seriously. You also must be sure to harvest responsibly and sustainably.*****

While I am by no means an expert, I’ve successfully identified lion’s mane, oyster mushrooms, turkey tail, cauliflower (BRAIN fungus), American Caeser’s mushroom, Witches butter, reishi, chicken and hen of the woods, a variety of coral fungus, and others at this location. Today (June 26, 2013) I found plenty of black trumpets and left plenty there for us to find tomorrow. They are delicious! Bring a paper bag (NOT PLASTIC) if you think you might like to take a few home and try them out.

I can also tell you there will be dozens or hundreds of others I won’t be able to identify. However, most of them make for great photo subjects, so do bring your cameras!

We’ll hike 2-3 miles. There are a few minor elevation gains here and there, but generally, this is a pretty easy trail and our pace will be leisurely to moderate. The more mushrooms we see, the slower we'll go, stopping here and there to identify or take pictures.

We will meet up around 10:20 in the overflow parking lot so we can begin our hike at 10:30. The overflow lot is between the memorial parking lot and the dog park parking lot. You can get to it from either of them.

Be sure to bring water or some kind of electrolyte replacement. You may also want to bring bug spray; they’re not much of an issue if you stay on the move, but since we’ll be stopping here and there, they may find us. 

Leita Thompson Memorial park is located on Highway 92 near the Super Target.

If you can't go, please remove yourself from the list so someone else can.