THUNDER BAY — A local mycologist has been trying to spread his passion for fungi in Thunder Bay.
Ben Bohémier, who mainly studies the reproduction of chaga and its ecology at Lakehead University, has been enthralled with fungi and mushrooms for close to seven years.
For the last few years, Bohémier has been involved in the community, attempting mushroom walks and educating the public on different fungi.
Spreading his passion for fungi, he said it’s been really fun and he has taken a lot of really cool mushroom photos over the years.
“I’ve just been a lover of fungi. I hope to continue and do a PhD studying mycology somewhere,” said Bohémier.
The mushroom season, typically in a good year, Bohémier explained, foragers would get their chanterelles popping up in July.
“You’ll get your first flush of chanterelles popping up kind of mid to late July, but… different patches fruit at different times, so some can fruit in the fall, some fruit kind of like late to midsummer,” Bohémier said.
Typically, the best diversity and the most mushrooms foragers will see, Bohémier said, is all dependent on rain.
If it’s super dry, the mushrooms aren’t really going to do very well, he added.
“In the fall time is when it gets cooler and moist and more humid,” Bohémier said.
“And... usually a drop in temperature and an increased humidity will get the mushrooms to fruit and you... if it’s good, get an explosion. You can’t walk more than 5 feet, 20 feet or whatever without stopping every five seconds.”
Chaga (inonotus obliquus) is one of the mushrooms that many people in Thunder Bay know about, pick and harvest all the time, according to Bohémier.
“It has a really very interesting ecology that most people (who) pick chaga… aren’t really familiar with how (it) reproduces and its ecology and has a really remarkable way of doing that, (which) in my work, I hope to teach people about,” said Bohémier.
If anyone’s learning to forage mushrooms, first and foremost, Bohémier recommended going out with someone who knows their mushrooms: “That’s always the best way to learn.”
“Go out with someone who knows what to do, what to eat or what’s what,” Bohémier said.
Before going out to forage and wanting to eat a mushroom, he also advised people to learn about what it is that they’re foraging and become familiar with it.
“Once you become familiar with one mushroom that you can eat… and you know how to identify it and you’re familiar with the characters like its gills, its spore colour (and) various things, you can then use that knowledge to try, ‘OK, what about these other species?’” Bohémier said, referencing how it can be used to identify further mushrooms.
However, he said that the most important thing if people want to learn just to forage is to learn the top few mushrooms, such as chanterelles, lobster mushrooms, morels, which fruit in the springtime, or milkcaps.
“They’re really easy to (identify) and you can look up the names of those and they’ll come up,” Bohémier said.
Bohémier also said to learn about the ones that people can’t eat first.
The destroying angel (amanita bisporigera) and funeral bell (galerina marginata), for instance, are some of the commonly known few in the region that, if eaten, can cause death.
“Be wary of those, learn those,” said Bohémier.
The destroying angel, he explained, is pure white and it can be mistaken for many things.
“There are so many white mushrooms, so becoming familiar with that is a good idea,” he said, adding that if there is one a forager does not know well yet, stay away from pure white mushrooms.
“Chanterelles and lobsters, those are like orange, so pure white mushrooms, even though that’s what we’re familiar with in the grocery store, be hesitant, just in case, you never know,” he continued.
“Even though they are quite rare, they can occur. And they can kill you and not even the next day, like weeks later… It will destroy your liver.”