Weekend leisure: Fungi to be with

Peter Buchanan (right) with his family on a fungus ramble through Totara Park in Manurewa. Photo / Supplied

Puns aside, the world of fungi is fascinating, writes James Russell.

Saffron milk cap. Red crack bolete. Beech strawberry. Parasol. Poison pie. Death cap. You might not want to eat those last two. But for the rest of them, slice and fry in butter and serve on toast for breakfast. For they are all edible fungi growing in New Zealand.

As the autumnal mists descend, mushroom foragers gleefully dig out their Red Bands and raincoats. For a few short months they will be shadowy figures in the dawn, bent double, harvesting the elusive fruit. But for true fungi enthusiasts, the season does not end come winter, for fungi can be found year-round.

Like the proverbial tip of the iceberg, the mushroom, or fruiting body of the fungi, is only a tiny part of the whole - the rest of which is known as the hyphae. It is the staggering biodiversity of fungi that has kept Peter Buchanan, a mycologist and science team leader of biosystematics at Landcare Research, hooked for 30 years.

What he doesn't know about fungi is, actually, quite a lot. In his three-decade career, he has recorded about 7500 different species of fungi, and estimates this to be about one third of the way through the total number of species found here. It means the task won't be finished in his lifetime. In fact, no one alive today will see the end.

The New Zealand Fungal Foray, which this year celebrated its 25th anniversary, took place in May in the fields and forests around Taupo. It is a week-long event, attended by professionals and amateurs alike. The question most asked of Peter is if it's edible.

"The answer I would likely give is 'I don't know'. And probably no one knows. New Zealanders have followed the English tradition and been typically wary of experimenting with fungi. And Maori, not having written down their knowledge, and a lot of their knowledge having been lost over generations, we don't have that record of the indigenous people being able to tell us what is edible and what is not. We do know of some species important to Maori, however. The wood ear fungus is one, which the Maori called harore. In fact, this was the generic name for all fungi."

The stage of growth of a fungi may affect its edibility. The puffball fungi is edible when it is young (cut into steaks and fried), but as soon it gets soft and begins to emit spores - reminiscent of a puff of dust when prodded - it is definitely not for the dinner plate. Some of the ink cap fungi are also edible, but a collector must know when they are past their use-by date.

You may also be surprised to learn that the button mushrooms at the fruit and vege shop are a different species (although the same genus) from those field mushrooms found by foraging collectors.

Fungi are also very fond of trees, forming a symbiotic relationship with the species of tree to which they are best suited. Micorrhizal fungi are often found under conifer trees, for example. They help the tree to obtain minerals and water from the ground, and the tree, in turn, gives sugars and carbohydrates from the leaves of the tree dropping on the ground.

"This is true for most trees," explains Peter.

"In fact, 90 per cent of vascular plants have fungi naturally associated with their roots. When plants moved from the sea as a marine plant to the land, the fungi were already here, and so the partnerships between the plants and the fungi we think were the means by which plants were able to colonise the land," says Peter.

The annual Fungal Foray is organised by the Fungal Network of New Zealand.

If you're keen

Amateur fungi enthusiasts would do well to get in touch with Clive Shirley. An electrician by trade, Shirley's twin passions for fungi and photography has blossomed into an astonishingly professional website that features hundreds of fungi found in New Zealand, complete with wonderful colour photographs of the species he has identified. Under the auspices of the Auckland Fungus Group, Clive encourages those interested in exploring the world of fungi to get in touch and participate in his forays held twice a month.

Although, as he says on his website: "If you are not interested in getting wet or splashing around in the mud is not your thing, then find another interest."

Taranaki wool

One of the more curious Kiwi export products over time must surely have been the Auricularia polytricha, or wood ear fungus.

An early Chinese settler in New Zealand, Chew Chong, saw that grew in harvestable quantities here, particularly in the Taranaki area, presumably on rotting trees (where it flourishes) felled to clear farmland. It became known as "Taranaki wool". The mushrooms, eaten in pre-European times by Maori, were popular in Asia, and were exported from New Zealand until the 1950s.

Bizarrely, most of the wood ear fungus eaten in New Zealand now is actually imported.

James Russell and Peter Buchanan explored Totara Park in Manurewa in search of fungi.