What Is a Mushroom?

I love mushrooms for many reasons. Obviously some are tasty to eat. But they are also marvelous to look at, and they come in many different colors. When I pick them out of the moss or dried leaves and needles, I am amazed by how clean and perfectly shaped they are, a true art of nature. They are wonderful to hold. Some are heavy and velvety, like a ripening peach. Others are light, brittle, and shiny like a piece of jewelry. When I turn a mushroom over, I feel the spongy underside or admire the gills, which radiate from the leg like rays from the sun. But whatever the color or shape, mushrooms are all cool and of the earth.

Mushrooms seem like plants, but they don't have chlorophyll, the pigment that makes plants green and helps them produce their own food. Like animals, mushrooms "eat" their food. But they don't have feelings or stomachs, and they don't move around as animals do.

Mushrooms are fungi. Fungi don't reproduce from seeds, like plants, or from eggs, like animals. They reproduce from spores. Most spores are single, simple cells. Every mushroom produces hundreds or even millions of spores, which are carried to different places by the wind and rain, by animals and insects. New fungi grow from the spores. Some spores live for hundreds of years and are so hardy they can survive droughts and freezing cold.

If the conditions are right, a mycelium grows out of the spore. The mycelium is the body of the fungus. It resembles a mass of threads. A mycelium grows underground or beneath tree bark. It takes in food and expels waste. It can be huge, as big as a whole state! Some mycelia live for just a few days and some live for several hundred years. Every now and then, after a rainstorm, they produce new baby (or button) mushrooms.

Mushrooms are the "fruit" of fungi. Their lives can be as short as a couple of hours or as long as many years. Just as a tomato is only part of a much bigger plant, mushrooms are only part of the fungus.

Mushroom Names

Mushrooms often have funny names. When I hunt, I say, "I've got you now, slippery jack!" Or "You are not a prince, you are an old worm-eaten good-for-nothing!" I like to get the whole royal family in my basket, with the king, the queen, the prince, and the commander, but it's also nice to capture a gypsy mushroom or grab a pig's ear, or sneak up on a dead man's finger.

Every country has its own folk names for common mushrooms. There is a mushroom that some Americans call hen-of-the -woods because it looks like a hen roosting under a tree. But in other parts of America it is called sheep's head and, most strangely, cow's mouth. To the Japanese, the same mushroom looks like a dancer's kimono sleeves waving in the air, and there it is called mai-take — dancing mushroom. But in every country this mushroom is also known by its scientific name, Grifola frondosa, which in Latin means "leafy."

Scientific names, which are always Latin or Greek, are the same throughout the world and often offer interesting information about the mushroom. For instance, one little mushroom with a smooth reddish cap is called Dermocybe californica. Dermo means skin, and cybe means head. So it is a skinhead from California! Sometimes a mushroom's scientific name pays tribute to a person, like Boletus barrowsii, which honors Chuck Barrows, who pioneered the study of mushrooms in the southwestern United States. Or the scientific name may tell you where the mushroom was discovered, such as Suillus sibiricus, which was first found in Siberia. Guidebooks usually refer to mushrooms by their scientific names.

The Mushroom Feast

Mushrooms are not only delicious, they are nutritious, too. When I come upon a mushroom that looks as if it's been nibbled, it probably has been — by porcupines or hedgehogs. Sometimes I come across many mushroom legs sticking up from the ground like startled soldiers who have lost their heads. The delicious caps have been eaten by greedy squirrels and chipmunks. They got my mushrooms before I did, and it makes me mad!

I'm not fond of slugs, either. Slugs thrive on mushrooms, and sometimes I pick a mushroom and find ten of those slimy creatures on it. But after I've tossed the slugs away, what's left of the mushroom is mine.

The creature I hate most is a tiny worm with a white body and a black head. It is disgusting and treacherous. All day long I hunt, hunt, hunt. Finally I find a beautiful mushroom that looks perfectly healthy and delicious, but later at home when I eagerly cut it open, I discover the worms are already there, eating my dinner.

Truffles are the most expensive mushrooms of all because they are hard to find and have a divine flavor. The French call the BLACK TRUFFLE (Tuber melanosporum) the black diamond, and one pound of them costs as much as a good computer. In America truffles grow in Texas, California, and Oregon.

Truffles grow underground, where humans cannot find them. But certain animals are trained to sniff them out, and when they start digging excitedly, then you know that truffles have been found.

Goats lead Italians to truffles and bear cubs find them in Russia.

In France pigs are used, but they must be muzzled or they will quickly gobble up all the truffles they find. Another problem with the pigs is they are so lazy, the farmers must carry them all the way to the forest and back. Because the farmers are lazy too, they now prefer to use dogs, who love to run in the woods sniffing out truffles but don't like to eat them.

More Mushroom Lovers

Once after a mushroom hunt on an island off the coast of Maine, I sat on the beach to sort my catch. I had found some beautiful aspen boletes, which have round, robust red caps, and these I put at the far end of my towel. Before long a seagull darted down and stole one away. I laughed and thought, "He's mistaken the mushroom for a crab!" Soon he was back for another, and I realized he wasn't mistaking anything — he really liked the mushrooms. But when he came back for a third, I shooed him away and said, "That's all you get for now!"

All over the world mushrooms are eaten by people as well as animals. Pigs, cows, donkeys, deer, moose, reindeer, squirrels, turtles, mice, and kangaroos love mushrooms as much as I do.

The Kaibab squirrel of Arizona is a very picky eater. Captive squirrels reject all other food when mushrooms are available.

In India and Pakistan the OYSTER MUSHROOM (Pleurotus eryngii) is dried and fed to donkeys. In America our donkeys eat oats and we eat the mushrooms.

Siberian reindeer are said to be crazy about FLY AGARIC (Amanita muscaria). It seems to make them happy and perhaps has some medicinal...