THE KITSAP PENINSULA MYCOLOGY Society has been around for more than 50 years, can you tell us a bit about its history and origins? DAVID ANSLEY: “Well, I wasn’t in town then, so… it’s sort of shrouded in the mist of time. But it was a small collection of families from around Bremerton who got together with the same purpose that we’ve always had: Which is to share knowledge about mushrooms, mostly out in the woods around us. To share it amongst themselves and with their neighbors. And go hunt them and eat them. There was a heavy emphasis then on hunting and eating mushrooms because there were a lot of them out there. And the notable thing is, they had the vision to go out and create a non-profit organization that was devoted to this. That was back in 1972.”
And how did you get involved? “I’ve been involved for about a dozen years now. I just joined as a member because, like a lot of people, I had not been paying attention to mushrooms in the woods out here. Even though I am a native of the northwest, I had ignored mushrooms. And suddenly, I had a couple of random experiences with friends where they pointed out, or brought to me, mushrooms they had harvested that I had never seen. And I thought, ‘That’s weird, I’ve been hiking the woods and living in the woods around here forever, and I had no idea there was this huge, fascinating, and even edible, variety of mushrooms… I want to know more.’ So I found the club, joined the club, went to their meetings and a few of their forays, and I just got hooked.”
The annual show is coming up. That’s kind of a touchstone, a lot of people know about that, but the society also hosts events throughout the year. What do those look like? “We have recently expanded our offerings. We have always offered a couple of big forays in the spring and then a couple more in the fall to some picking areas that we know. In the spring, that’s for morels, and in the fall, it’s chanterelles plus everything else that’s interesting in the woods. But, because of the growth in our club and the decline of actual hikeable forests with mushrooms in it, we really adapted more of an informational habitat hike approach to a lot of our events. So we now offer hikes in the woods most months of the year to people who want to learn more about the habitat, the role of fungi in the environment and in the relationships of the plants and animals in the forest. Those Habitat Hikes have been really popular. We also offer our members a monthly meeting. Almost every month of the year, we meet in the rotunda at Olympic College, which holds about 75 people and we usually almost fill it, where we bring in a prominent speaker from the world of mushrooms and mycology or related fields to talk to us for an hour about their expertise and about a theme that interests people who like to hunt for mushrooms. Another thing we offer, in August, we have a big booth at the Kitsap Fair that offers to answer anybody’s questions about mushrooms. We have several folks from the group standing by and we get to talk to people one-on-one for hours per day about mushrooms and their habitat and answer whatever their questions might be… That’s a great way to talk to our neighbors about what they’re walking through, what they are seeing and, if they’re interested, invite them to come to a meeting… You know, it’s nice for people to discover that there really are other types of nerdy people out there who like to step off the trail and wander across the thick woods just to discover what’s there. And consider that a glorious afternoon. There’s lots of other people like that, like us, who love that.
There’s a big knowledge sharing component to this whole thing, how big is this group roughly? “It is a membership group and we now have almost 450 members. It’s an annual membership. We have some turnover. But we stay consistently above 400.”
Whoa! You’d mentioned you do events year round. I’m a novice and always kind of think of springtime and falltime as ‘mushroom season’ but is spring/fall the only time of the year for foraging here in the Northwest? “That’s when we typically forage because that’s when the most popular types of mushrooms are indeed up. But it’s important to say that the most recent count by an expert is 4,000 actual types of mushrooms produced in the Northwest, and no doubt more, that pop up any time of the year. Any day you step into the woods in the Northwest, there’s gonna be mushrooms around. Because, it’s up to the fungus when it decides the ideal time to reproduce. And that’s not just spring or fall. So even though the edibles may be in short supply, that’s not the only reason to be out in the woods. A lot of us are fascinated by the roles that mushrooms and fungi play in the forest ecosystem. That’s visible and understandable all year round.”
Mushrooms have long been tied to culinary and medicinal benefits, but there’s more to it. What’s one of the most interesting things that you’ve learned about mushrooms over your past decade or so of study? “Well… There’s an interesting role that mushrooms played in the ancient times. It turns out, there’s good evidence, that the reason we have coal is that there was a period in time, the carboniferous era, when trees grew and grew and fell over and died and nothing was available to digest them. There were no creatures on earth that had yet evolved the ability to eat wood. And so trees fell down and were gradually buried and compressed by successive layers of soil and rock, compressed into fossils of themselves that became coal. And that’s why we have coal today. But, mushrooms, which had existed, evolved to actually be able to digest the cells of wood. Gradually, they spread around the world and, from then on, trees that died and fell over were converted back into their nutrients by these scavenger mushrooms. That condition persists today. The woods are full of wood-eating mushrooms. And that’s why the world’s not making coal any more.”
Is it true that there are some types of mushrooms that glow in the dark? “Yes, there are! And, in fact, at night, if you have a little UV flashlight, many mushroomers carry one, go on a walk down a trail in the dark and just keep shining left to right along the edge of the trail and off into the nearby stumps, you will eventually pick up the glow of bioluminescent fungi.”
Fascinating. Even here in the northwest? “Yes… That is not just a tropical phenomena. It is a tropical phenomenon, but it’s a worldwide phenomenon.”
Which leads to a great question, if you could go anywhere in the world to hunt for mushrooms, where would you go? “Right here.”
Huh… really? Of anywhere in the world? “I’m not kidding. As near as anyone can tell, the Northwest happens to be one of the world’s premiere locations for hunting mushrooms. Because, first off, we have the habitat for it. Huge swaths of forests that persist for centuries and form these relationships with fungi. Secondly, we have moderate temperatures and moderate moisture year round, which both contribute to the happiness of mushrooms. And third, we have really good land use rules here. I have free access to, you know, millions of acres of national forests, state forests, national parks, state parks, county parks and various forms of private land all over the Northwest. Which is not typical in a lot of parts of the world. It’s not that easy to get into huge swaths of relatively undisturbed forest in many other places. And, finally, our woods are not trying to kill you…” // BILL MAN
CHECK OUT THE Kitsap Peninsula Mycology Society’s Annual Wild Mushroom Show with expert presentations, identifications, 150+ local species on display, mushroom-related vendors, tasting, field guides, kids activities and more, 1-5 p.m. Oct. 27, free, all ages in the Bremer Center at Olympic College, Bremerton. Find more at kitsapmushrooms.org.
AND FOR MORE MUSHROOMS check out the Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival Oct. 17-20 in Port Angeles and the Puget Sound Mycological Society Wild Mushroom Show Oct. 19-20 at Shoreline Community College.
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY of the Kitsap Peninsula Mycological Society.
