Fun with fungi: St. John's group demonstrating magic of mushrooms for Fungus Appreciation Day
CBC
Sunday is Fungus Appreciation Day and several events are planned at the Johnson Geo Centre in St. John's to put the spotlight on these organisms.
"They're integral to the environment, they make healthy soils and they allow us to dye wool. Food sustainability. People are growing them themselves," said Andrea van Nostrand, the Geo Centre's lead on interpretation and education.
"They're nutritious. They're easy to grow. Anyone can grow them. You know, this is a topic that you could teach courses on."
Andrea and her sister Lisa van Nostrand will be demonstrating how to dye wool with mycelium, the mushroom's root network.
Lisa says they gather the mushrooms and then dice them up, place them in a mesh bag and let them simmer in a pot for an hour.
"It's a simple process and you get unexpected results because you don't always know the colours that you're going to get," she said.
"From beige, yellow, orange, brown and rust colours. And so they're maybe a little bit of green. So they're quite muted, neutral colours. You know, you're not going to get fuchsia, not with their mushrooms anyway.… You get a really natural looking colours," said Lisa.
Andrea says she isn't sure how common using mushrooms as dye is in the province, but pointed to plenty of resources on the subject including books, articles and websites.
They also won't be eating any mushrooms during the demonstration as they could be poisonous, she said, with Lisa chiming in, "Well, they're not edible, let's put it that way."
Lisa recalled that growing up in St. John's, the common message was that mushrooms were poisonous, so they didn't eat them. Now she's seen an "explosion" in interest. While she enjoys foraging for mushrooms, Lisa said she doesn't actually like to eat them.
Andrea has also seen a proliferation of local mushrooms-related businesses and even farms that grow mushrooms to sell.
Anita Walsh operates such a farm with her family, the 160 hectare Portugal Cove-St. Philip's-based Windy Heights Farm. On top of growing mushrooms, they also sell mushroom growing kits.
From her perspective, people need to embrace the mushrooms.
"It's so underutilized and so misunderstood, that it's vital that we do not miss out on this opportunity to find out more about this amazing organism," Walsh said.
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