FungiQuest was happening during our mushroom season, so it really wasn’t that difficult to find mushrooms. We had all these events, a bunch of people would bring their kids, and everyone just kind of ran around the woods, taking photos of the mushrooms that they saw. I would give them tips on how to upload them and how to take the photographs because you should take it from the top and the side and a whole photo of the habitat and then the underneath and whatnot. I would hand out mirrors to people so they didn’t have to pick the mushrooms. They could just put a mirror underneath to take a picture of the underneath. That was part of the whole conservation component.

On what surprised him

I was taken aback by the sheer number of observations made. And also the number of species. Because they clocked in at about 4400ish species. And, you know, in North America, it’s estimated that we have about 11,000 types of fruit bodies. We have millions of actual fungi if you count the moulds and all that stuff. But fruit bodies that you’re going to find in the woods or wherever: we have about 11,000. Those 11,000 are over the entire year. But all mushrooms are basically seasonal. I have no idea how many fungi actually are in that month. No one could tell you. Right. But we happen to have 4400 out of definitely under 11,000 species. So you’re probably looking at at least 50 per cent of all the species that are known to grow in North America were observed. And that’s pretty neat. 

On what people should know about fungi

This seems like something a crazy person would say —, but I say this from the point of having done so much research, having spoken about it so much — I ultimately believe that there is a mushroom or fungi that can basically solve any problem that we have faced. We already have mushrooms that can eat styrofoam and plastics. We have mushrooms that can clean air or waterways. We have mushrooms that can essentially fix our own brains. Not to mention just decomposing things. They’re the thing that we just take for granted forever. But ultimately, we wouldn’t be here without fungi. Nothing would be here basically without fungi. They were the reason that we went from solid rock to soil. If it weren’t for fungi breaking down the rock, the plants wouldn’t put down roots. Animals wouldn’t have come around the way that they have. Their spores can exist in the cold vacuum of space and be reconstituted as a completely live creature. They are very unique as an organism and have been ultimately ignored by humans forever, except for a couple of key species.

Right now, five per cent of fungi are documented by science. Of those five per cent that are documented by science, we know virtually nothing about them. It’s basically like: we have a name, and we know what they look like, and that’s where it stops. We have so many more to look at now and ask: what can this do for us? I think it’s a race against time. I am kind of a pessimist with how things are going in the world. But I think that the solutions do lie with fungi. I think they started it, and all the answers are out there. Like they say, the answer is under your nose.