fungus among us

Inspired by the diversity of toadstools and mushrooms we came across recently on our walk in the woods, I was drawn to a special exhibit at Wiesbaden’s museum (previously here and here and probably in more spots) on the nutritive, toxic and social history aspects of fungi.
From classification and identification to application and preservation, the displays were engrossing and enlightening as they ranged from the culinary, pharmaceutical and their oversized role as pigments for dyes and warrior cosmetics and I especially liked the artistry of the dioramas with a section dedicated to the workshop that created these diverse, liminal (neither animal nor vegetable)  mushroom mannequins.
Actual specimens, like creatures of the deep, wouldn’t survive public scrutiny and many could potential offer hazard and models were made and placed in their native environments to illustrate their role in the ecologies of various biomes. The exhibits on the usage of fungi were supplemented by local anecdotal enterprises, like a crafty woman who coloured wool in many shades with mushroom sourced pigments and another who was a successful farmer and we’re thinking of cultivating our own in our root cellar and have embarked on a course of study to those ends.
It is strange to think how these elaborate and embellished fungal fruiting bodies are just vehicles, ultimately, to spread spores and propagate the species but I suppose that the same is true for ourselves, however we might consider ourselves the refined heirs of a long line of succession. 

daytrip: hochrhön

We had the chance to do a bit of local exploring near our home and we found the ruin (die Mauerschädel as it’s singularly known) of a fortified church built around the year 1000 and abandoned about three centuries later during the height of the plague (Pest) in the fields behind the village of Filke, the inter-German border separating Bavaria from East Germany once passing through the nave of the structure.
In the 1970s, the whole of the structure was ceded to Bavaria for security purposes. Though the outbreak of the plague is considered the likely culprit for its eventual abandonment, another anachronistic suggestion is that once bulwarks of the region, Filke and other surrounding settlements that essentially became ghost-towns before being eventually repopulated sacrificed themselves to the marauding tribes of the Huns, able to Christianise the scouting parties only to be later betrayed and massacred. A maiden in white is said to haunt the grounds, but that is a relatively recent embellishment.
Afterward, we took another detour to see some marshland in a nature reserve (the whole region is a nature reserve, really, but there are also specially designated areas that are protected from traffic and development) but the trails didn’t really get very near and the scrub separating it from the path was intimidating. H and I did however get the chance to explore the deep woodlands and encountered some deer that bounded past us before we could react.
More our pace, however, we found an assortment of mushrooms and toadstools that we resolved to learn about and come back to the clearing where they seemed to thrive.
The forest directly behind our house are baronial lands, still in the same family, and we wouldn’t want to be accused of poaching.

chanterelles oder pfifferlinge, linge, linge, linge

With Spargelzeit already just a fond memory this season, we are just entering into Pfifferlinge harvest time—called in English chanterelles (it sounds like a Doo-Wop group) and from the Greek κάνθαρος for a drinking tankard, the little yellow mushrooms looking sort of like a loving-cup—and we tried a new recipe for spaghetti with braised Pfifferlinge, onions and sundried tomatoes. It was pretty simple and not too labour intensive to make—plus very tasty, and seems fairly versatile and would work with other varieties of mushrooms, noodles and seasonings.

For four servings, one needs:

• 400g Pfifferlinge 
• 500g Spaghetti 
• 50g Sundried Tomato 
• 1 Garlic clove 
• 4 Spring Onions (Leeks) 
• 500ml Vegetable Broth 
• 1 large red onion 
• 1 bundle of fresh Parsley 
• 100ml of Crème Fraîche 
• Salt, Pepper, Nutmeg for seasoning and a bit of oil for frying 

Wash the Pfiferlinge and along with the diced onion, thinly sliced tomato and garlic, fry in a large pan on middle heat, turning often. To the side, prepare the pasta according to the instructions and the vegetable broth. After around ten minutes, when the spaghetti is nearly ready, cut the leaks into rings slice up the parsley and introduce it to the mix. Add the vegetable broth and bring to boil briefly before stirring in the crème fraîche. Season to taste and enjoy with a refreshing white wine.

fungus among us

Though not quite the confectionary house of the witch that lured inside Hansel and Gretel, a very clever student at London’s Brunel University (named for the famed architect and civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel) is developing a construction medium that fruits from edible mushrooms. The stringy, root-like mycelium is mixed with cardboard as a filler and then left to grow to form a pretty robust frame. The student envisions future bottom-up, pop-up kiosks and food booths serving dishes plucked off the walls. Apparently mycelium has already been field-tested and there is a precedent for these “mushroom sausages” as building elements with bio-bricks and other experiments that one can learn more about at the link above.

mycological characteristics

Kottke informs that the variety of mushrooms that certain dishes and culinary presentation calls for—and what we are readily willing to pay a premium for—are the same species of fungus but harvested at different points of maturity. The portobello mushroom is no different than dime-a-dozen button mushrooms, just with a better P-R agent. It makes me think of the great baby-carrot fraud, which are just the whittlings off of club-sized carrots that would not be seemly for the produce-aisle.

garden switchboard

For more than a century, botanists have known about the symbiotic partnership between fungi and plants—the networks of fungal mycelium bundled with the roots of shrubs and trees described as a “mycorrhiza” association that is mutually beneficial in helping the other extract certain nutrients from the soil. What researchers are just discovering, however, is the breadth and depth of those connections and the nature of that relationship that’s akin to a subterranean vegetable information superhighway: the long tendrils of the fungal mycelia link individual plants in myriad ways and are the lines of transmission for chemical signals through garden plots and whole forests.
In a fascinating overview from BBC Earth magazine’s archive, featured recently on Dave Log 3.0, ecologists examine how this fungal internet allows plants over great distances to not only warm one other of intruders, it facilitates the sharing of nutrients and even allows the older generations to aid new spouts with sustenance, sabotage of unwanted neighbours and even parasitic behaviours. I feel a little guilty for my potted companions now, who might feel essential restricted to solitary confinement. I suspect, however, there are other modes of plant communication. After seeing more devastating wildfires for Australia in the headlines, I learnt that not only are the eucalyptus trees evolved to be explosively flammable—not unlike the strange venomousness given to everything there—and many of the seeds of other trees will not germinate without a periodic scorched-earth policy (or alternatively, arson by self-immolation), further prior to the settlement of Europeans, the stretches of eucalyptus forest that are a familiar sight today did not exist. The Aborigines, who had been landscape artists for tens of thousands of years, were careful cultivators and kept the forests pruned back, favouring grasslands that acted as fire-breaks and foraging grounds for game. It seems the Aborigines knew the risk of letting Nature run its favoured course, and that begs the question: what is Australia’s (or any land’s) natural state—wild or tamed, either by exception or by tradition?

fungiculture

Spargelzeit (Asparagus season) with all its fanfare and focus is a distant memory by now but one up-side to the change of seasons and the cool and damp days ahead is the advent of Mushroom Time. Pfifferlinge, a savoury scalloped fungus found on tree trunks, is my favourite—celebrated with just as much intensity, and while any foraging for these gourmet delicacies, such work is best left to seasoned experts, many keeping the faithful locations of the appearance of this heritage fruiting a secret guarded as well as that for a prized vintner, since there are many more varieties that are deadly poisonous than edible. This time of year, many restaurants adjust their menus—Tageskarte, Speisekarte—to showcase this time-honoured mania.

1up or der glückspilz

This vintage German New Year’s greeting card is just exuding good fortune with all the lucky paraphernalia featured, the greeter riding a pig jumping over a stand of mushrooms (Glückspilze) and armed with a horseshoe and four-leaved clovers. About the only talisman, at least in German traditions, not shown is a chimney sweep (Kaminkehrer). I am just as curious as to why this profession and not butcher, baker or candlestick maker is considered auspicious, but what strikes me first is how the chimney sweep comes bearing the same toadstool.  Deconstructing the symbols of luck is a bigger challenge than the turns and transpositions of holiday customs, and it is remarkable how many ways the inscrutable language of fortune infiltrates culture, yet remaining humble in its portrayal like this archetypal mushroom—everyone’s generic idea of what a mushroom should look like but having strange powers and a mysterious past. The Caterpillar from Alice’s adventures through the looking-glass holds court from such a tuffet, the Brothers Mario gain size and power from these bonuses, the Smurfs (les schtroumpfs, die Schlümpfe) lived in such mushroom houses—not to mention a staple in fairytales. A mushroom rendered in such a universally distinctive way can only be the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), a poisonous and unpredictably psychotropic fungus, which surely caused some fretful parents to condemn the Smurfs (and their underwater counterparts, the Snorks) as promoting drug use, like the same concerned group thought that the Care Bears were a satanic gateway organization, and although the mushroom grows anywhere that pine trees grow, it was considered highly dangerous to ingest (although most drugs I think are unpredictable) and there is only evidence in use in the far eastern reaches of Russia, restricted to the shaman caste or religious purposes.
I wonder how such an exclusive yet ubiquitous substance was translated to some universally hoped for but escapingly rare commodity as providence. It is strange what can develope in abject isolation.  It’s no explanation, but the luckiness of the chimney sweep, who introduced industrial cancer and labour reform to the world besides, seem to operate under a similar logic—a reminder that one’s hearth and home had not burnt down, due to a poorly maintained fireplace, but still representing a kind of forbidden and untouchable skill, like for those who live in psychedelic houses.