About Fungi Time

First, Why Mushrooms?

In recent years, mushrooms have gained some popularity within American culture. The reason for this uptick in interest can be attributed to several causes: promotion of medicinal mushrooms (both psychedelic and supplements), increase in foraging due to the pandemic, TV shows and movies where fungi play a particularly threatening roll (like The Last of Us or Annihilation), and advancements in science that allow for DNA examination of fungi. Once you notice them, mushrooms seem to be everywhere. But, then again, mushrooms have always existed within our visual and literary culture, just think of Alice in Wonderland or Super Mario Bros! But, most importantly, it’s because I love mushrooms.

What is this project about?

This DH project is done in conjunction with my MA thesis. As stated in the introduction of my thesis, I was not always a huge fan of mushrooms. I could not fathom what attracted anyone to eat them until someone gifted me Peterson’s Field Guide to Mushrooms of North America. Despite my disdain, I flipped through and found myself mesmerized by the beauty of each fungal sketch. I had no idea about the scarlet glow that came from a golden helmet (Mycena leaiana), or the delightfully shaped gills of a collared pinwheel (Marasmius rotula).

Unlike other guides, Peterson is organized by color first, then descending into other characteristics like gills and attachment. Though the descriptions were short, I took Peterson’s writing on what a mushroom is to heart. With this newfound appreciation, I sought out more books on the topic of North American fungi, such as Funpedia or Audubon’s guide to mushrooms; Other field guides and popular science books in the hopes of broadening my horizons on what there is to know about mushrooms. However, I found that no two books wrote about mushrooms the same way. Both field guides and popular science books described mushrooms differently, not just in physical descriptions, but within areas such as edibility, toxicity, and their cultural importance.I then checked out children’s books to see how mushrooms were written about for kids. There, too, I found some small differences.

At the most basic level, this project’s use is to understand the different ways that we know and describe mushrooms, a cultural property of an object. What are the different words that writers use to explain what they’re looking at in the field? What stories, objects, and facts are used in explaining not just the physical matter, but the cultural history around a mushroom, too. In reading several field guides, pop science, and children’s books, and putting them through tools like Voyant and Cytoscape, I’ve found a variety of ways to know a mushroom in the forest that extends past physical features. For example, we can view it as a piece of culinary delight, examining the different words people use to describe flavor or ingredients often used in relation. Or as an important piece of folklore across time and different countries. We can examine how poison is described, the odd words that relate to death or distress in relation to a mushroom. Overall, my goal is to explore the differences in how people see and write about mushrooms for the general public.