I’ve just spent four days with people who love nature enough to celebrate the fungi, plants, insects and the rest of the natural world.
The COMA foray brought mycologists, biologists, chemists, chefs, and any other skill you can imagine, together to explore the woods of Moodus, CT in their favorite way.
I could write forever about ways to eat mushrooms. I really like to eat, so I hung out with the foragers and the chefs, while the scientists spent hours peering through microscopes to study the details of the samples we brought in.
I had a chance to follow George Johanson to a spot where hazelnut grow.
I’ve never seen maturing hazelnuts. Squirrels usually get there first.
I also found wild grapes, chokecherries - which are surprisingly tasty when fully ripe - and Asiatic day flowers, which taste like string beans eaten raw and spinach when cooked.
I had no idea that wild rice grew in CT, but here it is.
What’s neat about this grass family member is that the part that looks like a seed head is the male organ. The tall vertical stalks are the female organ on which seeds have not yet formed. Foragers and scientists shared that the seeds do not ripen simultaneously, making harvesting difficult. Chippewa people developed a technique to successfully harvest this plant. Everyone else I spoke to failed in their harvesting attempt.
I still have to sort through my fungi notes from COMA. I learned more about mushrooms than how to enjoy the edible ones. I took notes on mushroom reproduction, mushroom genera and cooking techniques.
I listened as experts with years of field experience debated their fungal observations and theories. DNA is a new development in the mycological world. I didn’t realize just how little research has been done on many fungal species. Like other living entities, fungi move as the weather patterns shift.
I learn best from watching and imitating others. This was a crash course in mushrooms that has made a huge difference in how I look at the natural world.