Rachel Kukull gathers chanterelles growing in a mossy patch of woods in the Chilkat Valley.
From porcini to chanterelle to polypore, this year has been a good year for edible mushrooms and a great year for fungal diversity, according to local foragers, who credit the wetter than average summer with the fungal abundance.
“All mushrooms love moisture. We had that mugginess all summer that kept the ground moist,” mushroom enthusiast Sabine Churchill said.
This year was the third wettest summer on record for the Haines townsite with a total rainfall of 11.25 inches.
“This year has been a great year for mushrooms here in Haines and in much of the state,” naturalist Judy Hall Jacobson said, noting that, as a temperate rainforest, Haines tends to have a climate well-suited to mushrooms.
“The common denominator is the right combination of dry and wet days early in the season, and then lots of rain in August and September,” Jacobson said. This has to do with the way fungi are structured, she said.
Mushrooms are the reproductive or fruiting part of fungi. A fungus grows below ground, through cell division in the mycelium, the vegetative part of the organism.
“Mushrooms ‘grow’ when their cells balloon, or enlarge, by absorbing water, usually in the form of rain,” Jacobson said. “After a mushroom develops, it has almost the same number of cells. This is why they can go from the size of a pinhead to the size of a dinner plate in very little time.”
Species including king boletes, chanterelles and sweet tooth are particularly productive when it rains a lot.
They have a symbiotic relationship with trees known as mycorrhizal association where fungi mycelium intertwine with tree roots, increasing water and nutrient absorption for the plant and allowing the fungus to absorb carbohydrates the plant produces through photosynthesis, Jacobson said. The more it rains, the more these types of fungi produce mushrooms.
“Anything related to chanterelles, they just really soak up water and grow really big. They started early this year and are still going now,” chef and forager Travis Kukull said, adding that this summer he’s routinely had 20 pounds of chanterelles in the fridge at any given time. In contrast, last summer was hot and dry, which translated to a short, two-week window for chanterelles.
This year, foragers have noticed increased diversity in the types of mushrooms they’ve encountered.
“There’s a lot of variety growing right now,” Kukull said. “This year, I found these little trumpet chanterelles, which I’ve never seen before. People have found black trumpet chanterelles and yellowfoot chanterelles.”
Kukull rattled off a list of other edible mushrooms he’s encountered including king bolete, also known as porcini, birch bolete, sheep polypore, blue polypore, hedgehog mushrooms and cauliflower mushrooms.
Different fungi grow better in different conditions. While some have thrived this year, others have been less abundant. Chicken of the woods, a staple of Alaskan foraging, is one variety that’s been notoriously absent.
“The chicken of the woods thing is a real mystery,” Kukull said. In past years, the mushroom, which is high in protein and has a distinct bouillon flavor, has been abundant, but this year, Kukull said he’s only found a small patch.
Even for practiced foragers, mushrooms remain somewhat mysterious and unpredictable.
Kukull said he tends to return to the same patches every year, and sometimes they just don’t produce. “Sometimes mushrooms take a break and don’t show up in a given year,” he said.
Churchill said she lets her intuition guide her when it comes to mushroom hunting.
“When the mushrooms are calling me, I get a hint, and I take my mushroom knife and go for oodles of hikes,” Churchill said. “I think I have a pretty good feel for it, an intuition for when they are ready. Every year seems to be different.”
Like Kukull, Churchill reported finding varieties this year that she’s never seen before.
“I found bear’s head mushroom for the first time this year,” Churchill said. The fungus measured a foot across and looked like a forest of white icicles.
Churchill said one of her favorite local mushrooms is club coral, which, as its name suggests, looks like something found under the sea. The mushroom has a sweet flavor and pairs well with cinnamon and butter, she said.
Both Churchill and Kukull said mushroom foraging is a skill they’ve honed through years of practice.
Churchill began in 2011, learning from her friend Leslee Downer.
Kukull said when he and his wife Rachel first began foraging in Haines, they would walk around with a field guide simply identifying mushrooms.
“Rachel and I did that for a year before we worked up the courage to eat them,” he said.
Kukull said he routinely takes new people out on foraging trips to teach them about mushroom identification.
“When I take people out, I like to emphasize not making guesses. When you find something new, most likely you’re going to be wrong about it,” Kukull said. When he comes across a mushroom he’s unsure about, he throws it back into the woods. “It’s not worth the risk of having your nervous system shut down,” he said.
The sunny days in early September have slowed this year’s phenomenal mushroom growth, Jacobson said. “In just the last week with lack of rain, mushrooms have slowed way down. In my experience, I noticed too that mushrooms form best when there is a period of rain and then a period of sun.”