‘It’s like a treasure hunt’: B.C. conditions are magic for mushrooms

Mushrooms large and small, tasty and toxic, are popping up across British Columbia this year in what experts say is a bumper season for fungi.

Mushrooms large and small, tasty and toxic, are popping up across British Columbia this year in what experts say is a bumper season for fungi.

B.C. forest ecologist and mycologist Andy MacKinnon said he’s been out picking edible fungi this year with fellow mushroom expert Paul Kroeger on Cortes Island, one of B.C.’s Discovery Islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland.

“Every time you go out on a foray, it’s like (a) treasure hunt. That’s part of the fun of it. You don’t know what you are going to find,” said MacKinnon, who is a co-author of Mushrooms of British Columbia, a handbook published by the Royal BC Museum.

MacKinnon said 2022 was a very bad year for mushrooms, with an “extraordinary” drought during the summer that carried into the fall.

Southern Vancouver Island, where MacKinnon lives, didn’t see any rain for 90 days last summer, he said.

This year’s drought was still bad, he said, but then the rains returned in the fall.

Mary Berbee, a professor at the University of British Columbia Department of Botany, said the exceptional drought last year stressed fungi, and that September’s rains led to a more usual flush of mushrooms.

“This year hasn’t been better than average for mushroom diversity, but it has been much better than last year,” she said.