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It’s August Mushroom Mania in the Woods
We found many different varieties of fungi in our lakeside forest this week.
While I am a formally trained environmental educator, obtaining a second master's degree in 2018, fungi have never been my specialty. I am well versed in developing outdoor curricula for school-aged children, presenting on pollinators, prairies, and even the forest, but my mushroom knowledge I’d rank pretty low. I taught a mushroom unit twice during my fifteen tenure of leading a garden club for elementary students. Making spore prints was successful and fun, having them understand mycelium? Not so much.
We only used mushrooms I provided from the grocery store — white buttons and portabello, as I was afraid that if I took them on a nature walk someone would ingest something they shouldn’t. And I was not adept at mushroom identification.
But I am always aching to learn new things. And with our move from a midwestern agricultural-prairie setting to the Northwoods of Wisconsin, I find it’s a perfect place to learn more about mushrooms. Our cabin sits on 2 forested acres on a lake in Northern Wisconsin. In 2005, we cleared only enough trees to build our cabin. The land remains so today, growing mostly birch and cedar, and pine with a lot of uncleared debris littering the forest floor.
