The secret world of wild mushrooms

The mushroom “capital”

During the day, rural São Marcos da Serra seems to be a land lost to oblivion.

But at night, there’s great deal of activity at the door of Hortense Dias and her husband Manuel Bombarda. Refrigerated vans make detours into the little town to load up with a refined and fragile product.

Hortense, 53, recalls how in 1990 she had her first contact with the world of wild mushrooms.

It continues to be a one-man business (not a limited company) but involves a network of more than 50 pickers, from all over the Serras do Caldeirão and Monchique – even stretching as far back inland as the plains of Ourique.

Thousands of different varieties of mushroom await their destiny in the couple’s large chest freezer.

From there, they go on to supermarkets in countries like Spain, England, France and Switzerland (where they still arrive ‘fresh’ and perfect).

With luck, they’ll return to Portugal transformed…

This year “a lot of produce has gone out” – more than a ton since October.

Each different variety and quality has its market price. The most expensive is the golden chanterelle (cantharellus cibarius).

The couple can pay pickers 15 euros a kilo for these delicacies – sometimes more. This year, because there are so many, their price hasn’t passed the €5 marker.

Very soon, in March, there’ll be other delights – like the silarca (Amanita ponderosa), known here as the “Cup of Lent”.

Throughout the picking season, Hortense and Manuel negotiate over ten different varieties of mushroom, and keep some stock at home for local sales, too.

Harvest worries eco-experts

Wild mushrooms only exist in “wood-like environments”, and they have a fundamental role when it comes to the balance of ecosystems. “Either because they break down organic material, or because they’re connected to the roots of trees”.

This explanation comes from Ana Frutuoso, of NRS-APEA (the regional arm of the Portuguese association of environmental engineers), which considers it very important that “forest producers” are made aware of the situation, as well as the public, so that this natural resource can be protected.

Mushrooms are “excellent allies for the forest producer, because if the latter is mindful of all the possibilities on his property, he can boost his income considerably”, she told us.

To give an idea, Rui Simão – an engineer for «Ecofungos», an ecological association of fungi experts based in Lisbon – told our newspaper that “we estimate that between 1.5 and 2 million euros can be “lost” annually on mushrooms that are picked by national collectors and sold on to Spanish, French and Italian intermediaries”.

The value is calculated on the basis of data collection from various other fungi-oriented organisations, and from information from the Mycology centre at Lisbon University.

Trying to register the number of pickers working through the Algarvian hillsides is as difficult as attempting to identify who owns which particular tract of land.

This is the opinion of Ana Frutuoso, who studied the sustainability of mushrooms in Monchique as part of her graduate thesis.

“The problem is that people pick too many mushrooms, and they pick “incorrectly”, eco-engineer Frederico Vieira, also president of NRS-APEA, adds.

All that’s needed to keep things in control are simple measures like harvesting mature specimens only – to increase numbers in the next generation, the following year.

Mushrooming out of control?

“Right now there are absolutely no rules, and no legislation, regarding the picking of wild mushrooms.

The only control that exists is the Civil Code, which deals with the invasion of private property”, Vieira continues. (Already in Spain, each region has its own “mushroom legislation”.)

Nonetheless, the days of this sylvan anarchy are numbered.

In September 2009, the “Código Florestal” (Forest Code) was published in the national «Diário da República» newspaper – putting all forestry legislation that existed in the past into one legal document.

Although it hasn’t yet come into force, it provides for new rules and definitions.

For example, it distinguishes between picking for own consumption as against gathering for commercial gain – and in future, a “professional” picker will have to take out a licence, and be limited to collecting no more than five kilos per day.

It will also be against the law to pick mushrooms from areas near industrial sites, from the sides of roads, or near rubbish and refuse dumps. “This is because the mushroom is a bio-accumulator of heavy metals”, Vieira explains.

Fatal delicacy

The temptation to serve these delicacies of Nature at the table has been the cause of many accidents and deaths by intoxication – particularly in Northern Portugal.

If you think that “around 99 per cent are inedible”, it’s not in any way safe to launch oneself into the business of gathering wild mushrooms.

By the end of December 2009, CIAV (the anti-poison information centre) had received 31 calls from people showing symptoms of mushroom poisoning.

For Ana Frutuoso, information is the key to survival. “You can never simply identify a mushroom by looking at its cap (top).

You need to observe various characteristics and then cross-reference the information – from the stem, the gills (lamellae), the smell – to correctly identify a species.

The most attractive, nicest-looking mushrooms are very often the most dangerous”, she says.

Another grave danger is “habit”. Without the correct attention to detail, it’s easy for even the most experienced mushroom fans to pay for a mistake with their lives.

To have an idea of the dangers, any mushroom species that contains alpha-Amanitin (or a-amanitin) attacks the liver and causes death by hepatic or renal failure.

“Just 20 grams of the Amanita phalloides (or so-called Death Cap Mushroom) can kill a man weighing 80 kilos.

The worst part is that sometimes the effects of the toxicity only show themselves two weeks later…” Cooking poisonous mushrooms at high temperatures is also NOT a way of reducing their toxicity – as the poisons cannot be destroyed by heat, and resist any forms of cooking.

Old wives’ tales that poisonous mushrooms can be identified by their ability to turn silver, or even cloves of garlic, black – or that a mushroom consumed by animals is safe for human consumption – are also totally without foundation.

New opportunities

But, on the other side of the coin, Frutuoso counts 15 species in the Algarve that one CAN eat safely. And a good place to look for them is one that is humid, with healthy trees and some wild, green scrubland.

“The large majority of edible species are ‘mycorrhizas’ – that’s to say, they depend on trees to survive, just as trees depend on mushrooms to more easily reach water with nutrients.

” Thus areas that haven’t been swept by forest fires can hold veritable hoards of these little domed delicacies. But contrary to restaurant practices in the Alentejo, Algarvian eateries rarely feature wild mushrooms on their menus. “That’s because people are afraid of them. There is no system in place guaranteeing quality, or any form of labelling. There are not even receipts”, Vieira tells.

In addition, “there aren’t many studies on mushrooms in Portugal. You can count the number of inventories on your fingers – and here in the Algarve, there are species that don’t appear even in published mushroom guidebooks”, he adds.

Because of this, both eco-engineers agree that mycology is a business that’s still relatively un-explored – full of areas rich with possibility and potential financial gain. You just need to be aware of the risks…