A world of wonder beneath our feet

It’s one of those autumn mornings that seem gently wrapped in cotton wool. The air is damp but freshened, as if a soft mist had wiped the landscape, and moved on. It seems like a good day for a mushroom hunt in the romantic setting of Kilruddery estate near Bray in Co Wicklow.

Several dozen people are gathering at the Grain Store, an attractive barn conversion near the big house. We are here to learn how to identify tasty fungi for the table – and avoid dying in the attempt.

That might sound fanciful, but awareness of danger is the first step to a relaxed and happy relationship with foraging for fungi. The names of certain mushrooms speak eloquently for themselves: the sickener, the livid pinkgill, the destroying angel, and the death cap, for example.

With that concern in mind, I have brought along a handful of very attractive little white mushrooms, that I have come very close to tossing on the pan with butter several times; they keep popping up, temptingly close to our kitchen door, in Glenmalure.

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I've repeatedly tried to identify them in John Wright's very useful River Cottage Handbook on mushrooms. They seem close, but not identical, to one edible species, the Miller. And they also share some, but not all, of the characteristics of a poisonous "confusion species", the fool's funnel.

Bill O’Dea, the affable and entertaining founder of Mushroomstuff, who is leading the hunt, takes a long look at them. He rules out the Miller option. But he is still puzzled, and consults a colleague. Mushroom identification is tricky, even for experts. They finally declare them to be fool’s funnel. Good thing I hadn’t fried them up, then.

Knowing your mushrooms

The thing about knowing your mushrooms is that you need to match several, features – cap, stem, gills, smell, spores, and habitat among them, before you even consider eating one. O’Dea’s website, like all reputable writing on the subject, advises beginners never to trust their own judgment, but to ask an expert as well.

This may all sound rather forbidding, but when O’Dea launches into his introduction, he engages the audience easily, making us feel that it is well worth taking the trouble to learn the basics.

The abundance of species is breathtaking, and daunting, with an estimated five million across the planet, and perhaps 5,000 in Ireland alone. And since the vast majority are neither tasty nor toxic, you may find a dozen varieties on an Irish forage that don't appear at all in popular (and excellent) books like John Wright's Mushrooms, which focus solely on treats for the table – and on those you must never even taste.

The good news is that there are several very widespread mushrooms (see below) that are not easily confused with any poisonous cousins. That narrows down the field a lot, though “caveat forager” still applies: at least 15 of our commoner mushrooms are lethal to humans, with some 250 more “severely poisonous”, O’Dea says.

And even when you become skilled at telling a delicious blusher from a deadly panthercap, you must take care to brush all bits and pieces off the mushrooms you pick; the biggest danger to the experienced forager is the accidental inclusion of a small fragment of something toxic in your collecting basket.

O’Dea rightly spends a lot of time on identification skills, and vividly communicates the gastronomic pleasures mushrooms offer. But his enthusiasm for these seductive organisms bring him to some surprising places.

Medical benefits

Mushrooms can be used in bioremediation, helping transform mining waste into fertile soil. In Japan, turkey tails are prescribed for cancer treatment, and while he stresses he is not a doctor, he believes we are only beginning to tap the potential medical benefits of fungi.

He welcomes the (slight) easing of the long freeze on controlled research into the psychological effects of "magic mushrooms" (Psilocybe). He says there is increasing evidence that properly supervised use can help alleviate depression.

He tells us that our Christmas season culture may owe quite a lot to the hallucinatory effects of fly agaric, the vividly red and white mushroom favoured as an intoxicant by the Vikings, and the most likely candidate for the unscientific title of toadstool.

“Where do you think the idea of flying reindeer comes from?” he asks. As for Christmas tree decorations, he speculates that they derive from the Viking custom of hanging these colourful fungi out to dry on fir trees.

And then he dispatches us to the woods and grasslands of the estate, with an appeal to “get into the zone” if we want to fill our baskets. Most beginners, he says, find very few mushrooms, even where they are abundant, because they are not attuned to picking them out.

This becomes apparent as our little group wanders into a woodland. At first, we wonder if there are any fungi at all in the leaf litter. But, within half an hour, to our amazement and delight, we are finding new species every few yards, as if scales had dropped from our eyes.

And when all the groups return to the barnyard, several long tables are strewn with dozens of species in a rainbow of colours. Each one is carefully identified by O’Dea and his colleagues, before we return inside for a feast of several fungi they have collected earlier.

Infinite kingdom

The wonder of this vast kingdom of living things, quite distinct from plants, is almost infinite, O’Dea says. He points out that there is nothing in nature that does not involve fungi. He is awestruck by the invisible web of interconnected root threads (mycorrhiza) underneath our feet, on which all living things ultimately depend. The mushrooms we see above ground are only the fruiting parts of this enormous hidden world.

He approvingly quotes a forester who conceded that a woodland is, at bottom, “a fungal system with trees”. Fungi are, he agrees, the perfect expression of the ecological idea that everything in the world is connected. “Thinking about this natural system borders on spirituality,” he says. “They give you a sense of a god-like entity in nature.”

As well, of course, as offering us a cornucopia of delicious flavours.

Getting started on the mushroom trail

Based on advice from Bill O'Dea
Eight edible species, easy to identify
Field mushroom (Agaricus campestris)
Horse mushroom (Agaricus arvensis)
Common puffball (Lycoperdon perlatum)
Chanterelle (Cantherellus cibarius)
Cep, or penny bun (Boletus edulis)
Birch bolete (Leccinum versipelle)
Parasol (Macrolepiota procera)
Shaggy inkcap (Coprinus comatus)

Five foraging hot spots
Phoenix Park, Dublin
Portumna Forest Park, Co Galway
Derroura Woods, Oughterard, Co Galway
Lough Key Forest Park, Co Leitrim
Glenveagh Forest Park, Co Donegal

Tools of the trade
A small, sharp, curved knife, ideally with a little brush attached for cleaning mushrooms
A broad, flat-bottomed wicker basket (bags make mushrooms sweat and mix up species)
A hand lens (not essential, but enhances the visual pleasure)

Website, books, app
mushroomstuff.com Bill O'Dea's website, with details of upcoming guided hunts (October 7th and 14th at Kilruddery)
Mushrooms by John Wright (Bloomsbury), recipes included
Collins Fungi Guide by Stefan Buczacki, Chris Shields and Denis Ovenden (Collins)
Roger's Mushroom App – 1,650 European and North American species on your phone, from the renowned specialist Roger Philips; rogersmushroomsapp.com