The Many Mushrooms of New York City

Title: The Many Mushrooms of New York City

Tiffany Hansen: It's The Brian Lehrer Show here on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Brian today. He will be back on Monday. We're taking a right turn now into mushrooms, something you might see at the Farmers Market, or maybe sprouting from a rotting log. Of course, New York City, in despite of all of our concrete and our steel, has a very rich fungal ecosystem of its own, believe it or not.

From Central Park to obscure corners of Staten Island, mushrooms of all shapes, science, sizes, scientific names are quietly thriving here. There's one group of New Yorkers paying very close attention. That group is the New York Mycological. I hope I'm saying that right. We'll ask our guest, that's the NYMS, the New York Mycological Society. You may have read about them in the New York Times this week. The reporter Andy Newman had a great article with the headline Hunting the Wild Mushrooms of New York City.

We're going to talk with Ethan Crenson, who is president of the NYMS about mushrooms. That club welcomes culinary enthusiasts, become a hub for citizens, taxonomists, anybody tracking fungi in the five boroughs. Ethan, welcome. Did I say it right?

Ethan Crenson: Yes, you did. Thank you for having me on. I'm really delighted to be here.

Tiffany Hansen: Absolutely. Listeners, what are the weirdest, most beautiful mushrooms that you've seen in and around the five boroughs? Call us, text us 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. First of all, Ethan, tell us about the society. Who is it? What is it? What do you guys do?

Ethan Crenson: New York Mycological Society is a very diverse group of people who just love mushrooms and other fungi. It was founded in 1962 by the Avant-garde composer and artist, John Cage, who was asked to teach a class at the New School for Social Research in Composition and really didn't want to do that for some reason. As a compromise, he taught a class in mushroom identification in exchange for also teaching the composition class.

After the New School discovered that there was some liability in having a mushroom identification class and decided they didn't want want it anymore, that class, the core students and teachers of that class spun off into the New York Mycological Society in 1962, and it's been going strong ever since.

Tiffany Hansen: I mentioned a few corners of New York City where folks might see mushrooms but those aren't the only spots. First of all, tell us where in and around the five boroughs folks can find mushrooms, maybe interesting varieties of mushrooms, and then what those varieties might be.

Ethan Crenson: It's really possible to find mushrooms in any park, even the most humble park, but the club focuses its efforts on the more forested parks in New York City. Parks like Pelham Bay Park, and Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, Forest Park in Queens. We go to Staten Island a lot where we visit Wolfe's Pond Park, and High Rock Park. Really, the kinds of mushrooms you find in these parks really depends on the season that you're visiting.

That's one of the things that the New York Mycological Society has spearheaded among mushroom clubs in North America is that we visit these parks all year round. Most mushroom clubs go dormant in the winter. People want to stay inside, do other things, and be warm. New York Mycological Society goes out all year round and visits the parks. That's really part of what we do. We're doing a longitudinal survey of fungi in New York City, a census, if you will, of New York City's mushrooms.

Tiffany Hansen: You mentioned it's year round. I'm wondering if there are mushrooms that are more likely to be seen. Obviously, there are mushrooms more likely to be seen at different times of the year. Then, also, the follow up to that would be, are there mushrooms that are really unique to not necessarily the five boroughs, but our region?

Ethan Crenson: Yes, absolutely. In terms of seasonality, many of your listeners may be aware that as spring approaches, the delicious morel mushroom is one of the favored mushrooms for foragers. Spring, other than that particular mushroom is a dormant season. As mushroom season ramps up into the summer, that's when we see more mycorrhizal mushrooms. Those are mushrooms that have a symbiotic relationship with certain trees.

Tiffany Hansen: You mentioned morels, which a lot of people love to eat, but we should say, folks, don't go out and try to do this on your own. First of all, because you could get really sick.

Ethan Crenson: True.

Tiffany Hansen: Second of all, it's illegal in New York City to forage, correct?

Ethan Crenson: That is correct. Foraging anything in New York City parks, animals, plants, and fungi is illegal. The New York Mycological Society has a research permit for the work that we do. We have a very good relationship with the Parks Department, and I think we're doing valuable research.

Tiffany Hansen: What's the rationale behind that illegality? Is it just we don't want a bunch of people ending up in the hospital from eating bad mushrooms?

Ethan Crenson: That may be a component of it, but I would think that our parks are sort of a shared space for all New Yorkers. The logic is that you don't want 8 million New Yorkers going into all of the city parks and taking whatever they want out of them. I think that would leave the parks desolate.

Tiffany Hansen: We have folks that are going to want to head out to the parks this weekend. It's going to be beautiful weather. If somebody says, "I'm going to tackle this. I'm going to go out and look for some mushrooms this weekend." What's the best bit of advice? What kind of gear? Anything special, they can really just start tromping around? What should they do?

Ethan Crenson: Especially this time of year, what you really need are sharpened senses. You really only begin to find mushrooms when you're actually looking for them. The more you look for them, the more that you find. In the woods, I bring a hand lens to look at very small mushrooms. I bring a pocket knife in order to remove them from their substrate. I bring paper bags in a basket. You always want to put your mushroom collections in paper bags rather than plastic so that they don't decompose more quickly.

One of the things that we do when we're looking for mushrooms in New York City is we share our observations. There is a public platform, an app called iNaturalist, that a lot of our members use to post their pictures of mushrooms and get advice on what the identifications might be. This iNaturalist is like a Facebook for nature.

Tiffany Hansen: Oh, good.

Ethan Crenson: You don't necessarily have to post mushroom pictures there. You post any natural organism that you see. All of those things are good equipment to have.

Tiffany Hansen: Great. All right. We've been talking with Ethan Crenson ahead of this warm weekend ahead of us. He's the president of the New York Mycological Society. We've been talking about mushrooms. Again, don't forage, just look. Ethan mentioned that app. You can take some great photos. At any rate, Ethan, thanks so much for the time. We really appreciate it.

Ethan Crenson: Thank you.

Tiffany Hansen: I'm Tiffany Hansen. I've been sitting in for Brian Lehrer today. Brian will be back on Monday, fear not. In the meantime, have a great weekend. The Brian Lehrer Show is produced by Lisa Allison, Mary Croak, Amina Cerna, Carl Boisrand, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Our intern is Henry Saringer. Meg Ryan is the head of Live Radio. Julia Fonda and Milton Ruiz are at the studio controls. As I said, I'm Tiffany Hansen. Have a great weekend.

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