Do You Know Your Boreal?

Mushrooms!

Beaver: ts’íbee dzagé’ (Literal translation: muskeg ears) Cree: ayikinônâcikan | French: champignon

What’s so Fantastic about Fungi?

Fungi is a kingdom, distinct from flora and fauna. Fungi are beneath our every step, and mushrooms are the fruiting bodies that make the invisible visible.

There are three kinds of fungi: decomposers, parasites and mutualists.

1. Decomposers—These rotters produce most of the mushrooms we eat. They also move all the nutrients from dead organisms back into the cycle of life. Without them, plants and animals, including us Homo sapiens, couldn’t survive here on Mother Earth.

Morel

Morchella sp.

French: morilles

Ken Dies from Fairview helped me with the fungi names for the Mother Earth book and submitted several photos. On one of his expeditions, we found some Morels near Lac Cardinal, and I got to fry the findings in butter! Yum!*

*BEWARE: Only eat wild mushrooms if you know for sure they are safe to eat. And even with the edible ones, most of them need to be cooked first.

[p. 10 in Mother Earth]

Comb Tooth

Hercium coralloides

We found Comb Tooth on a fungi foraging foray in the forest at Figure Eight Lake. When fried in butter and seasoned deliciously, it tasted like lobster to my husband and me.

[p. 10 & 15 in Mother Earth]

Fly Agaric

Amanita muscaria French: Amanite tue-mouches

This cute little mushroom comes in yellow and red and is the fruiting body of a mycorrhizal fungus—so I guess you could call it a networking specialist.

For tiny creatures, this charming toadstool could give shelter from the rain, but if hungry hikers pick and eat it, they may not hike again! (Cute, but poisonous.)

[p. 12 in Mother Earth]

Russula sp.

I love seeing these colourful mushrooms popping up from the forest floor as if to say, “Here I am!” They come in red, yellow and I’ve even seen a green one.

[p. 11 in Mother Earth]

Shaggy Mane

Coprinus comatus

I was delighted to find Shaggy Mane mushrooms growing along Pat’s Creek Trail (Peace River/Northern Sunrise County) last autumn.

2. The second type of fungi are parasites, which prey on other organisms. For example, there is a zombie fungus that grows through an ant’s body and hijacks its brain. Yikes! Let’s move on to some friendlier fungi.

3. Mutualists specialize in collaboration.

There is a tube-like Mycorrhizal fungi that hooks up with the roots of trees and other plants and sets up a symbiotic relationship, forming an underground network (called the “wood-wide web” by fungi aficionados) that allows trees to communicate and share resources with each other.**

**This was discovered in the late 1990s by Suzanne Simard, a Canadian botanist in BC. You can watch her TED Talk on YouTube—How Trees Talk to Each Other.

If you fancy being lost in wonder, the film Fantastic Fungi, available on Netflix, has mind-blowing cinematography and stories about the third kingdom.

[p. 15 in Mother Earth]

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For more fun facts and photos of fungi and other Peace Country phenomena, see the Mother Earth book at your local library, or contact me, Sharon E. Krushel, Peace River, AB.

For information on the 288-page Mother Earth coffee table book, photo exhibits, hikes and presentations, contact Sharon Krushel at 780-624-6324 or krushel@mac.com

Visit MotherEarthBook.ca to order the book online or find a retail outlet near you.

Facebook: Mother Earth Book

Instagram: MotherEarthBook_PeaceRiver

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By Sharon Krushel, author of Mother Earth: Boreal Beauty of the Peace Country

with Flora, Fauna, & Fungi ID, including Latin, French, Beaver & Cree

Photos by Sharon Krushel