Forest a fungi forager's dream

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

It is a fungi fanatic's fantasy.

Deep in the Urewera forest each autumn, you can barely put a foot down without squishing a mushroom.

Tomorrow, 50 fungi aficionados from around the world will tread carefully through the Urewera National Park.

Mushroom experts who roam the world foraging for exotic species have come to New Zealand this month for the perfect conditions - muggy, wet weather that entices fungi to pop up in fields and in the damp shade of towering trees.

Fly agarics, the red-and-white-spotted toadstools of fairy tales, are invading the forest floors.

Ink caps are poking their shaggy lawyer's wigs through the long grass in forest clearings. The smelly native basket fungus, which attracts flies into its bizarre crocheted lair, lurks under rotting logs.

Mushroom gatherers are out with their buckets searching for the culinary delights.

Two Ukrainian women now settled in Auckland, Ida Deryabina and her daughter Lena Dolgova, forage under the pines in Woodhill Forest for slippery jack.

The sticky, spongy, yellow mushroom resembles the fungi the women once collected in their homeland.

Wearing plastic gloves, they are careful what they pick - some of the world's most deadly fungi are spreading their spores around New Zealand.

In the past two years, more than 250 calls have been received at the National Poisons Centre after people swallowed poisonous or hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Seventy per cent of the patients were children who accidentally ate the fungi.

Dr Peter Buchanan, a mycologist, or fungi expert, at Landcare Research in Auckland, warns foragers to be absolutely certain of what they are eating.

"It's never worth the risk of trying one just in case," he said.

Eating a death cap can be fatal. A large specimen of the mushroom - identified by a greenish-white cap and white gills underneath - has enough poison to kill several people. It attacks the liver and kidneys.

"We have had cases where it has come very close to a liver transplant," Dr Buchanan said.

"We have found death caps growing in Auckland and Hamilton, but we don't know how widespread they are.

"The big problem is when people mistake a death cap in its early stages for a truffle or a puff ball."

There is no colour rule for poisonous species, but if it's white underneath, you should be cautious.

Even experts are unsure how many mushrooms are edible. There are about 5000 species of New Zealand fungi - but mycologists are only a third of the way towards identifying them all.

The mystical fly agaric is another toxic species. Although it is often called a toadstool, scientists usually refer to it as a fungus or a mushroom.

The fly agaric is taking its toll on native fungi. It usually lives with pine trees in a relationship called mycorrhizal, where each feeds off the other.

Native fungi will not form that relationship with pines, but they do with trees in beech forests.

Now there is a real concern that fly agaric is invading the territory of New Zealand fungi, and taking over their role.

"We're working on that, trying to understand why it's occurring," Dr Buchanan said.

"There is a risk we could lose some native species. But there are so many species that we don't know about yet, they may disappear before we even discover them."

This may not be a good year for mushrooms, after a very dry summer. Dr Buchanan and his 50 friends will find out over the next four days on their foray through the Ureweras. But the fungi foragers doubt they will have mushrooms for dinner during their expedition.

"We are only collecting them for scientific and education purposes - not to eat. So they won't be on the menu unless they've come from a shop."