Cargreen

As Californians look skyward in anticipation of the coming rain, some Sonoma County residents have their eyes set considerably lower.

Walking slowly, scanning the wet earth and the spaces between tree roots, mushroom foragers take to wooded areas, grassy knolls and coastal roads to find, map and sometimes consume the fungi that call western Sonoma County home to call.

More than 10,000 mushrooms and fungi have been identified in Sonoma County, according to the nonprofit Sebastopol Sonoma Mycological Societythere is plenty to see.

Sevastopol mycology club

Mikhael Crystallah-Selkon, the association’s treasurer and taxonomist, became hooked on mycology in 2016 while going mushroom hunting in Petaluma. There he found a coral tooth mushroom.

Now Crystallah-Selk collects mushrooms for consumption, but mainly for scientific research.

“We (Sonoma County Mycological Association) collect all the species we can find in Sonoma County, catalog them and just see what’s growing,” he said. He calls it a ‘mushroom count’.

The nonprofit organization is dedicated to learning about local mushrooms and educating the public about the vast and diverse world of mushrooms.

Sonoma County Mycological Association, founded in 1988, runs a camp every January, at the height of the wet season. Camp activities include classes and workshops focusing on all things fungi.

This year the organization is offering scholarships for Sonoma County students in fourth through twelfth grades who are interested in mycology and want to go to camp for a day. Registrations close on Tuesday, December 31.

Cyrstallah-Selk is excited about more opportunities to involve children in foraging, photographing, identifying and cataloging mushrooms.

One of the reasons children are excellent mushroom hunters, he said, is because “kids are a lot closer to the ground.”

At the camp, the group typically finds up to 250 species of mushrooms as they forage in wooded areas near the CYO camp in Occidental.

For safety reasons, Crystallah-Selk recommends a minimum of seven identification points for each mushroom.

“What is its shape? What is its color? What is its shape? What is the smell of it?” he said. “And then you go deeper into the details of it. You can research and create this seven-point checklist for yourself once you get comfortable with a mushroom. What do I notice?

He also uses David Campbell’s rule about confidence: if you’re insecure, don’t eat it. You can still take a photo and say you enjoyed your outdoor outing.

Educating the local population about the safety of mushrooms

Campbell, mycologist and founder of Mining ventures, first became interested in mushrooms about 55 years ago while living in San Francisco.

“I’ve followed a very broad path over the years hunting them, eating them, writing about them, taking photos of them and journeying behind the power of their existence,” says Campbell, whose primary focus is on edible and poisonous mushrooms.

The San Rafael resident has also been linked to the Sonoma Mycological Society, Mycological Society of San Francisco And Mycological Society of Marin County.

Many who want to include mushrooms in food for their taste, texture or health benefits lack a basic understanding of mushroom biology and structure and therefore lack the knowledge of how to properly cook a mushroom, according to the Mycoventures team.

This is something Campbell and Mycoventures partner and chef Julie Schreiber are working on by hosting foraging events that end in a cooking demonstration.

After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 1991, Schreiber worked with a chef at Café Beaujolais in Mendocino who purchased mushrooms from collectors on the Mendocino Coast.

She said it was not uncommon for collectors to sell the mushrooms they found to residents and restaurants.

‘People who went foraging would knock on the door and say, ‘I have these, do you want to buy them?’ And (the chef) said, ‘If you’re going to buy them, you need to know what you’re buying,'” she recalled.

Another chef encouraged Schreiber to familiarize himself with the locally grown mushrooms used in the restaurant’s cuisine.

Since discovering her passion for mycology, Schreiber has worked with the Sonoma County Mycological Association and the North American Mycological Association.

Fungi forage and eat

Mushrooms are made of chitin, the same structure that makes up the exoskeleton of insects and crustaceans. While vegetables like celery have cell walls made of cellulose.

Overcooking mushrooms is almost impossible. As they continue to cook, they become firmer. And cooking ensures better digestion because the chitin is broken down, making it easier to digest in the intestines.