“They are really an integral part of life on the planet,” Blair said. “Bacteria and fungi are the primary decomposers in the environment, so if we didn’t have them we’d be knee-deep in dead things. … They are an overlooked kingdom.”
Blair, who lives in Moss Beach, lectures in the biology department at San Francisco State University. He’s also former president of the Mycological Society of San Francisco, and leads the occasional hunt for “fruiting bodies” along the coast between the San Francisco and Santa Cruz.
 MOss Beach mushroom expert J.R. Blair pick apart a wild mushroom before an attentive crowd during an educational hike through Rancho del Oso in Davenport. |
Eating wild mushrooms can be delicious or deadly. Last year, an East Bay family wound up in the hospital after ingesting toxic “death caps” they’d picked in the woods in Marin, mistaking them for a harmless type. “Destroying angel” is the other common type of fatal fungi in the Bay Area.
Attendees at Blair’s presentation expressed fascinations stemming from the culinary to the psychedelic to the outright paranoid.
When asked what drew him to the hunt, Mario Sikorski gave a flat reply.
“Survival – just in the case the economy totally tanks,” said the Saratoga economist, half-jokingly.
At the heart of the pack of hikers, Jessica Saatdjian hoped to soak up experience on mushroom identity. Donning a torso-sized hand-drawn mushroom on the front of her sweatshirt, the 24-year-old environmental health student characterized the symbiotic relationship between humans and fungi as an “evolutionary partnership” defined by an inherent propensity to be free of harmful bacteria.
“People need to be open to natural earth medicines rather than pharmaceutical products. … (Mushrooms) are the pinnacle example of how the world is balanced and interconnected,” Saatdjian said.
Noting the function of fungi to recycle dead matter to nutritious soil, Blair would agree.
Aside from the stigma associated with fungi, mushroom picking on public lands is outlawed in California, creating a prickly roadblock on the path to mushroom education among individuals, Blair says. Hunters regard their mushroom haunts the way a chef regards a secret recipe, which keeps fellow enthusiasts from being open about their experiences.
“It’s unfortunate there’s not a place set aside where people can pick mushrooms,” Blair said.
In an effort to carve out a more prominent place for mushroom research, the Mycology Society is working on an agreement with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to conduct an environmental impact study in San Francisco’s Presidio this winter.
It might not be the most fruitful season for finding mushrooms, given the drought, but fungus finds a way.
“Hunting has not been real great compared to other years,” Blair said. “But (mushrooms) are always out there, no matter what.”
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