Early treats for mushy lovers
Fungus is making an early appearance on our menus. Christina Persico reports on a very pleasant unexpected arrival.
Mushrooms are blossoming months early this year.
The potassium filled fungus, which is about 90 per cent water and doesn’t need sunlight to grow, traditionally sprouts during autumn. So, this summer in parts of New Zealand where La Nina has produced intense rain, and not too much of the golden stuff, there has been a proliferation of the spongy vitamin filled food popping up.
Taranaki resident Helen Beard has already picked three or four bucketfuls, after the savoury product began to appear at the start of summer.
‘‘They just come up in a day,’’ she said. ‘‘We’ve had quite a few so far.
‘‘I love collecting them, going for the walk. It’s quite good coming home from work and going pottering through the paddocks.’’
She and her husband are not fans of the fungi themselves but she gives them away to family or cooks them up and gives to families through her work at the hospital.
‘‘They’re just so nice and fresh and clean.
‘‘It’s just been a different season for everything. Even when we didn’t have any rain for quite some time we’d have the moisture, having dew in the mornings.’’
Vikki Bazely, who lives in Taranaki’s Uruti Valley, had picked about 30 in January alone.
‘‘We might get a few at the end of March, but April’s when we usually get them,’’ she said.
‘‘Some years it’s really sporadic; some years we’ll get six or seven bucketfuls.’’
She thought the wet winter followed by the hot muggy summer may have brought the fungi out early.
‘‘The only thing is it does mean the spore count is up for facial eczema.’’
Tim Thornewell of Gourmet Mushrooms, which produces DIY kits for growing your own mushrooms, had seen field mushrooms sprouting much earlier than usual in Whangarei.
‘‘It’s normally March or even April,’’ he said. ‘‘Normally of course we don’t get a lot of rain and the soil doesn’t actually retain the moisture - it evaporates pretty quickly.’’
Landcare Research lead researcher Bevan Weir said autumn usually had the prime conditions for mushroom appearance, which were warmth and moisture, but he had seen a few while he was in Dunedin last week.
‘‘Fourteen days ago they had 100mls of rain come through,’’ he said.
It was too soon to say the early mushrooms were something to do with climate change, he said.
He said mushrooms are growing year-round underground and the ‘‘fruiting body’’ is seen when they go to seed under the right conditions.
‘‘That little mushroom we see peeking out the top is literally the tip of the iceberg. Those tiny little threads, they’re there the whole time so they’re just waiting for the right kind of temperature to produce that fruiting body.’’ Fellow lead researcher Peter Buchanan said to make sure you knew what you were doing if you planned to eat them, particularly if picking them out of season. ‘‘If you’re picking them out of season they may be different,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s something that people need to be familiar and confident of, and not to place themselves at risk. ‘‘Edible mushrooms that are growing under trees may not be the same that’s growing out in open grassland. Where something is growing can also be very important.’’