Mushrooms- Friend or Foe?
By Johanne Kittle Plant Rescue team

Jack-O'- Lantern These mushrooms are poisonous. They have a cap, gills, and stem orange to orangeyellow, malodorous, gills running down stem, luminescent in the dark and spores are white or cream. They grow in large clusters on stumps and have buried roots. They often grow around oaks. NEVER eat a mushroom that grows in the wild.

Mushrooms have a mixed reputation. Some people love them; where others see no value in them or even fear them. The cause may stem back to our American roots- a mixing pot of English and European traditions.English tradition has an anti-mushroom bias, perhaps inherited from superstitions of ancestors or from the experience from the small minority of toxic deadly varieties. Continental Europe has a positive bias towards mushrooms, primarily as an edible delicacy.

My first experience of collecting edible wild mushrooms was in Colorado. We met some German ladies who were collecting mushrooms to eat. They showed us in their German book that they were edible. They could barely speak English. We decided to collect some and eat them. We brought them home and ate one. We started having second thoughts and the rest of the mushrooms turned into a slimy mess. (Mushrooms will quickly deteriorate and if you are planning to eat them, it is wise to eat them shortly after collecting). This may have been a wise decision. Many species of mushrooms look similar with some being edible and some being toxic. Some European species that are edible look like toxic varieties that are native to our area. An old saying is "There are old mushroom hunters and there are bold mushroom hunters but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters."

Mushrooms are neither plant nor animal; they are part of the "kingdom" of fungi. Some books state that there are over 38,000 species of mushrooms, with our Southern region of the USA being the most diverse with over 3000- 5000 varieties. Mushrooms have no chlorophyll so they form a symbiotic relationship with other organisms (trees or soil). The trees provide food and the mushrooms can help the tree with mineral nutrition, resistance to disease, and water stress under drought conditions. Our trees can certainly use all the help they can get with our lack of rain! You have probably seen mushrooms growing on dead trees; this is another way that mushrooms are a key part of the ecosystem--by decomposing dead plant material into nutrients.

Mushrooms are not the whole organism- they are just the reproductive part or "fruiting body". The largest part is underground. Mushrooms are part of the biggest organism on earth; the enormous fungus covers 2200 acres of the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon. It is 3.5 miles across or 1665 football fields and is estimated to be 2400 years old. DNA testing has verified that the entire organism has the same DNA. The honey mushroom is the variety that is part of this giant. This fungus has become invasive and is killing the pine trees, so the mutual benefit of the symbiotic relationship has gone bad.

We have a great opportunity in our area to enjoy the beauty of mushrooms; one more example of the diversity of our mountains. There are so many different ones and so many different colors to delight the eyes. I have decided to enjoy them for their beauty and not try and collect them for eating. There are so many similar varieties that even though I have been to multiple seminars and studied books, I do not feel comfortable collecting