How an amateur scientist became one of B.C.'s top wild mushroom experts

The first thing you notice when spending time with Paul Kroeger is that very little escapes his eye. 

From garbage on the street, to a child's footprints embedded in concrete, or plants and animals in and around his neighbourhood, the 65-year-old Vancouver man notices it all.

"Something a lot of people are lacking is the power of observation," he said. "It's a great thing to be able to go anywhere and observe and interpret what you see and notice things."

A lifetime of curiosity has led Kroeger, a self-described citizen scientist, to become one of the leading authorities on wild mushrooms in B.C., a place where there are at least 3,000 species.

He's helped write numerous books on mushrooms and helps the province's poison control centre identify mushrooms that people have ingested. All this is from his unique ability to recognize mushrooms where they grow.

"I had enough of a personal interest in it and a drive and a liking for being alone in the woods," he said. "I put in a lot of field work and saw a heck of a lot of mushrooms, so I began to recognize mushrooms so that there weren't that many other people that were at a similar ability."

"Fungiphiles" like Kroeger are about as plentiful as the species themselves. Scientists have determined that fungi are more closely related to animals than plants. They can be hard to find, look weird, serve as delicious and nutrient-rich food, and also play a critical role in ecosystem health.

"The diversity is mind-boggling," said Shannon Berch, a retired research scientist with the B.C. Ministry of Environment who has worked on several studies with Kroeger.

Berch says Kroeger's life-long passion means he has developed a deep knowledge of fungi, making him a special citizen scientist. 

"When professional mycologists have questions about the diversity of mushrooms here, we go to Paul and we ask because he just has that encyclopedic knowledge," she said.

Kroeger got hooked on searching for mushrooms and learning as much as he could about them when he moved to Vancouver in the early 1970s from Penticton with his parents and three siblings.

He grew up traipsing around the woods trying to identify plants and animals for fun, but in Vancouver, he was impressed with the size and abundance of mushrooms that he began coming across.

"When I came to the coast I was just blown away by how many mushrooms there were," he said.

Kroeger bought mushroom field guides published by the Royal B.C. Museum and spent hours searching for the species out in the wild.