TD 1
Q: What is a mushroom? A: A mushroom is the fruit
ing body of the fungal colony. Bill O’Dea asks and answers the question. He is Mr Mushroom after all and his foraging walks attract all sorts from the cottagecore, to foodies, rewilders to new-agers and those simply fascinated by fungi. Our curiosity has literally mushroomed since the days when composer John Cage persuaded administrators at the New School to allow him to teach a course on mycology alongside his music classes. “Supreme good fortune,” he once wrote in his diary, as he held a fine specimen in his hand. “We’re both alive!” Nowadays there are countless expeditions, societies and even the world’s first film festival – Fungi Film in Oregon – dedicated to this rich abundance in our soil. Before traipsing around the woodlands in Ballyteige which is nestled amid three interlocking valleys along the River Ow, Bill gathers all assembled for a brief rundown in an outhouse, projecting his laptop learnings on to a billowy sheet. “There could be 12 million fungal species in existence, yet fewer than 100,000 named, our knowledge is evolving all the time,” he says. “In healthy soil there’s 16km of mycellium, the underground network of fungal threads, in every square metre.” Here in Ireland, he estimates there are roughly 4000 mushrooms of which 25 are good edibles and 50 are severely poisonous. “The short cut is to focus on both ends… of course, you can eat any mushroom once,” he chuckles, recounting a response to Dáithí off the tele when he enquired about whether one should sample mushrooms from the back garden. 16 Bill believes that those of us brought up by Irish parents were largely “fungiphobic… we don’t have a culture of picking wild mushrooms apart from the field one. Compared to France, Spain, Poland and Eastern Europe where they are celebrated in season.” He considers attributing this to a a possible “echo chamber” which may have been created on our island by some “bad experiences within relatively small communities” back in the day. “We’ve lost a lot of our history of cuisine, there is a peasant food culture that is treasured elsewhere whereas we have a certain shame about it which possibly comes from the famine.” In the East, mushrooms have always been more highly considered, something which Bill brings up when discussing Turkey’s Tail and how an extract from it us used as “a standard part in cancer treatment” in Japan. And while they bolster the immune function, he believes the cost of clinical research trials coupled with the challenge in regulatory authorisation and patenting wards pharma off their trail… they are complementary, not alternative, medicines,” he is keen to point out. Clutching our baskets, we set forth in small groups wandering over mossy ground in the valley, crunching twigs and bark beneath our feet as the sun sprinkles through the trees. Accompanying us is Sean Mcardle from the Lodge, a place he bought back in ‘97. It was originally built as a hunting lodge in 1900 for a prominent Dublin-based surgeon of the time, John McArdle. The weekend retreat was used for entertaining and down through the years, some significant figures from Irish political history have visited the Lodge. Famed names such as John