When you spend even a short period of time with Marlene Snecinski, aka Mushroom Marlene, it changes the way you see nature. Your focus expands from not only looking at what’s around and above you but below, way below, as well.
On a preview tour of the upcoming Canton Land Conservation Trust Mushroom Walk, About Town was accompanied by Snecinski and Trust board member Betty Stanley. We had barely stepped onto the Uplands Trail off Orchard Hill Road, when they began to point out mushrooms of different shapes, textures, colors, sizes and as it turns out, purposes.
There was the darkly colored fungus spreading across a fallen log. The feathery, grey/brown gills attached to the inside grooves of a tree. Other delicate yellow tentacles that, somehow, emerged from the congestion of leaves, mud and rocks. And, there was the gooey, burgundy colored fungus that About Town declined to touch. During our brief walk, Snecinski even pointed out a damp tree branch lying on the ground, which was hosting seven different species of mushrooms.
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Apparently, nothing has enjoyed the recent months of wet heat more than Canton’s woodland mushrooms have. And, Snecinski couldn’t be more pleased.
Snecinski, a former Pratt & Whitney industrial engineer, has long had, “a fondness for science and nature that spills into eating wild fungus!” This fondness became her passion in 1994.
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It was that year Snecinski met a mushroom she couldn’t forget, at a potluck dinner held on Flaming Farm in Simsbury. The memorable mushroom was a chicken-of-the-woods variety. “I took one bite and it was then that I discovered that nothing, I mean nothing, can satisfy me like a wild mushroom.” She asked where one could find these extraordinary mushrooms. “In the woods,” came back the response. Snecinski was, “hooked.”
Today, Snecinski shares the bounty of her mushroom forays into the woods with local chefs, such as Husk’s Jordan Stein, “who has an appreciation for cooking with wild things.”
About Town asked Snecinski some mushroom basics.
AT: Mushrooms seem to be everywhere, although I’ve never noticed them before in such quantity.
MS: Wild mushrooms have a symbiotic relationship with the soil, trees, plants, insects and even other mushrooms that grow and live around them.
AT: But, a fungus is not the same as a mushroom.
MS: What we see on top of the soil is the fruit, the mushroom, of the fungus underground. The purpose of the fruit is to produce spores to reproduce more fungus. Some mushrooms have fungi that can grow underground for miles.
AT: What are your favorite types of mushrooms?
MS: My favorites change by the season. In the fall, I look for hens-of-the-woods which are bountiful and abundant. You can pickle them, make mushroom barley soup, dry, refrigerate or freeze them.
AT: What are some unusual uses for mushrooms?
MS: Fungi are being studied for the reclamation of polluted soil. There are also medicinal purposes for different mushrooms.
AT: You can use mushrooms in arts and crafts too?
MS: Mushrooms can be used for the natural coloring or dying of fabric or wool. They come in all shades of earth tones from: pinks and oranges to golds, reds, chocolates and olive. People can also craft wreaths from dried mushrooms.
In spore print, artists cut mushrooms off at the stem, then lay them down on paper where the spores create a design. You can make paper out of mushrooms too. And, there is fungsha which is like scrimshaw.
AT: What’s the best way to know you’re picking a good mushroom versus one that can harm you?
MS: Become educated about mushrooms and the environment around you. Verify, with an expert, whether any mushroom picked is actually edible or not edible. Support your local Land Trust and get comfortable with the world around you.
Here’s the Deal
mushroommarlene@yahoo.com; 860-658-5061.
Canton Land Conservation Trust, Inc. P. O. Box 41, Canton Center: www.cantonlandtrust.org.
Canton Land Trust Mushroom Walk: Saturday, Oct. 8 at 10:30 a.m. Rain date, Sunday, Oct. 9 at 2 p.m. The walk/talk is free. Meet in the cul de sac of Uplands Drive.
The Uplands Trail is unpaved, relatively flat, but uneven. Participants should wear socks over long pants and sturdy footwear suitable for damp conditions.
