The fungus among us

Alabama Mushroom Society President Anthoni Goodman, a doctoral candidate at UAB, said when the society was formed in late 2018, he was immediately excited to partner with the Birmingham Botanical Gardens because of their overlapping interest: the wild world of mushrooms.

“Most people, when they think about mushrooms, they think about button mushrooms at the store or oyster mushrooms if you’re a little more worldly. It turns out there’s a lot of really kind of wacky organisms that live out there, some of them are bizarre, and they’re just interesting because they are so bizarre,” Goodman said. 

After he reached out to the native plant studies sector, they created the first-ever introductory macro-fungi class that was taught at the gardens this January. Because the winter months is more difficult to find live specimen to work with, Goodman said they plan to keep the partnership going throughout the year, offering other classes through the seasons and introducing the Birmingham and Mountain Brook area to one of the newest fungi clubs in the state. 

The Alabama Mushroom Society is a newly formed group of people interested in discussing and learning about the “diverse, photogenic and often quite tasty mushrooms” in the region, Goodman said, where members primarily assist each other in identifying unfamiliar fruiting bodies and sharing foraging areas, finds and recipes. 

The North American Mycological Association (NAMA) is the parent affiliation to the Alabama Mushroom Society, Goodman said, which connects them to a myriad of additional resources and similar groups in the country. 

When Goodman moved from Arizona to Birmingham four years ago, there wasn’t any kind of mushroom-related organization in the area. So, after a few years, he decided to start his own, especially after noticing quite a few people going out to forage for fungi. 

“Everyone has their little honey holes, we call them, and most people are very reluctant to share their honey hole, especially for these very hard to find highly sought-after mushrooms,” he said.

He first started a Facebook page to see if there was enough interest, and people began to share on it regularly until he decided to register the group as a nonprofit. Even though there are people from all over the state — especially in Mobile and Huntsville, Goodman added — the majority of the club members reside in and around the greater Birmingham area. 

Personally, Goodman’s interest in mushrooms started when he was a child, where he said, “it was more of a novelty than anything else.” After being in the Arizona Mushroom Society for several years, he became interested in learning about some of the edible species and all about identifying local and diverse kinds of fungi. 

There are a lot of “really tasty choice edible mushrooms” right around the corner of people’s homes, he added, which is something he’s discovered since exploring the Birmingham area. 

“[Mushrooms] are things that are highly sought after by individuals, restaurants and communities … At the end of the day, there’s this whole hidden culinary world, and I think that attracts a lot of people,” he said. 

In Alabama alone, Goodman said, there are thousands of species of fungi, many of which have not been properly documented or classified yet. 

The most commonly sought-after mushroom found in the Birmingham area is the chanterelle or Cantharellus species, which are all grouped together but can come in a huge variety of slightly different forms. In 2018, there was a gigantic crop throughout the state.

“We had people bringing in just pounds and pounds and basketfuls and basketfuls of these things in really just prime condition. You can do a lot with those things, they’re really nice,” Goodman said.

Chanterelle mushrooms have a kind of earthy mushroom undertone, he said, as well as “a very district, very peppery smell,” and so people love to cook them in several different ways, including candying and pickling them. 

Another popular mushroom found in the Birmingham area is the morels, part of the Morchella species, which can be sold for upwards of $50 for a fresh pound. 

Personally, he’s become intrigued by the scientific categorization and classification of local mushrooms, although he knows many people in the Alabama Mushroom Society aren’t as interested in that side of the club. 

Goodman warns new foragers to read up on the laws about collecting and selling wild mushrooms, especially if they are going into parks. Many people who forage a large number of mushrooms each year actually just find them on their private property. 

At Oak Mountain State Park for example, they do not allow people to pick or collect mushrooms in the area, although people can freely observe or photograph many of the “great little fungi” in the huge span of land, Goodman said. Hiking is a great way to start looking for mushrooms if new people are interested. Other species found in the Birmingham area includes check of the woods, lion’s mane, hen of the woods and black trumpets. 

A point that Goodman stressed at his Birmingham Botanical Gardens class is that there are also many mushrooms found in the area that are toxic if eaten, even if they are cooked. 

“What we always say is if you are not 100 percent confident with the identification that you have come up with yourself, then don’t eat it unless you’re buying it from a store or grower or if it has been identified by an expert that has seen the specimen,” Goodman urged.

Color is not always a good indicator for identification, and often rain or the sun can change the look of the fungi and confuse people. Toxicity levels can range from a bit of gastral upset, he said, to death in some of the most severe cases, so it’s important for people to be careful.

Goodman said they are currently working on getting satellite operations across the state, finding a meeting spot in Birmingham for members and setting dates for additional talks at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. For more information or more classes available at the gardens, go to alabamamushroomsociety.org.