Postcard from Washington DC: ceps in the city

I have just fallen to my knees to peer at a dank blob protruding from some old wood in the undergrowth. Its improbable sheen has sent my new friends into raptures. “I haven’t seen one since last year,” gasps one companion. “That’s excellent!” enthuses another.

The object of this sudden affection turns out to be a “dog’s nose” — a shining black pimpled fungus that grows in the crevices of rotting logs and resembles its canine moniker with startling accuracy.

To chance upon this hard-to-spot morsel, Camarops petersii, I have not hiked deep into a remote forest but simply wandered through a city park. My first mushroom hunt is taking place, as unlikely as it might seem, in the US capital, three miles north of the White House. I’m one of about 30 who have gathered in Rock Creek Park for this so-called “foray” organised by the Mycological Association of Washington DC.

The volunteer-run club has its origins in the 1950s but has seen membership double, to more than 900, during the pandemic as people have sought outdoor pursuits and connection to nature. Though only members can join the excursions, annual membership costs just $20 and the forays are free, so it would be a cheap day out even for someone who is visiting the city.

Fungi have taken a much more relevant role thanks to all this other work that’s being done

We all set off together from the park’s visitor centre, quickly swapping the hard tarmac for a woodland clamber with mulchy orange oak leaves underfoot and bright green canopy up above. A downpour holds off as we press deeper into the forest, heads down in search of promising logs and tree bark. At one point I scramble up a mound of earth, reaching gently for tree roots to steady myself, and on emerging get more than I bargained for: I catch up with the group peering down at a snake.

“The world has got much more interested in fungi,” William Needham, MAW’s 71-year-old president, later tells me. A submariner for 30 years, Needham continued his love of what lies beneath the surface by developing a penchant for mycelium — the largely underground network of fungal threads that supports mushrooms — in his mid-40s.

“Fungi have taken a much more relevant role thanks to all this other work that’s being done, showing the relationship between trees, plants and fungi and how they communicate, and how much more important ecology has become with the climate issues,” he tells me.

As for dining out on his interest, Needham says it took him at least eight years of MAW membership to become comfortable identifying mushrooms well enough to eat them. These days he and his wife celebrate his hard-won expertise by cooking up wild mushroom omelettes and pizzas after their hikes.

The club organise at least a dozen forays a year, in local parks and forests, sometimes venturing to Virginia or Pennsylvania, plus there’s an annual weekend camp in September. Leading my foray is Matt Cohen, a landscaper and nature guide wearing a T-shirt that reads: “Tree hugging dirt worshipper.” Of 10,000-plus types of mushroom identified in the US, only 2,000 or so are edible; Cohen reckons he has eaten 30 to 40. “It’s like the ultimate communion with nature,” he says.

The hardiest of mushroom hunters continue their efforts year-round, in search of edibles

He warns many poisonous mushrooms lurk in the woods, some potentially deadly. Two go by suitably ominous names — “funeral bell” and “destroying angel” — which, Cohen says, are easily mistaken for lookalike edible caps. He’s seen them in Rock Creek Park. “They’re both pretty common mushrooms,” he says.

I don’t have to grapple with such risks on my foray — Rock Creek forbids picking mushrooms. Instead, I am catapulted into a world reminiscent of Victorian taxonomy, joined by a motley crew that runs the gamut of young DC hipsters to ageing suburban scientists. As we crouch down for inspections with our fingers in the dirt, I marvel at several sets of perfect pink nails.

I slowly learn my gills from my pores. One well-versed attendee helps me distinguish true turkey tail from its false imposter. I have never heard of either but am taken by leathery waves of caramel reminiscent of the bird’s plumage — and nature’s unending bid for riddle and camouflage. Later spots have a fairy tale ring: witch’s butter, fawn mushrooms and jelly spots.

“They’re just really geeking out on identification,” Cohen says of the hardiest of mushroom hunters who continue their efforts year-round, in search of edibles that persist through winter such as enoki, oysters and wood ears.

Cohen says the capital still has plenty of culinary delights to offer elsewhere. “You can find a lot in people’s yards,” he says. Sometimes he chances on chicken of the woods nesting at the base of urban trees, or meadow mushrooms and giant puffballs — which he likens to “tofu of the lawn” — in streetside gardens. His favourite find yet was a wine cap Stropharia, a springtime mushroom “just growing in a mulch bed” by Dupont Circle metro station.

I’ve not yet picked a wild mushroom, but these days I count them on the sidewalk on the way to work. They really are everywhere.

Katrina Manson is the FT’s US foreign policy and defence correspondent

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