Published by Mushroom People
As its name would suggest, Mushroom People is a magazine that loves mushrooms. It also loves gentle, charming, whimsical storytelling, as shown in the following report from the French countryside. Because while the French pharmacist plays a potentially lifesaving role for foragers across the country, it seems the so-called “guardian of poisons” isn’t always happy about such everyday heroism.
On a fall day, just before 2:30 in the afternoon, there’s already a queue outside the local pharmacy in Bois-le-Roi, a town on the edge of the Fontainebleau. Summer ferns crowding the floor of the sprawling pine and oak forest have faded auburn, and after autumn’s rainy days, mushrooms have manifested overnight. The afternoon crowd waits to fill their prescriptions, buy diaper rash creams and aspirins, and then there’s me: in line for mushroom identification.
When it’s my turn to approach the counter, the pharmacist doesn’t blink an eye. Unfazed, she immediately procures a pair of glasses and rolls up her sleeves. Her eyes rapidly scan my bounty, a mixture of spongy fungi picked from my garden. She tuts.
“Rule number one: Never mix your mushrooms. And don’t pick anything that you don’t think is edible.” She waves at a few small, shriveled, bruised gray mushrooms I’d scooped up in a hurry, and makes a whooshing sound. “These you can throw out immediately.”
“The pharmacist is the guardian of poisons”
France’s socialist regulations dictate that mushroom picking on state-owned forêt domaniale for personal use is legal. For those that want to feast on foraged luxury like cêpes and boletes without high prices per kilo, every pharmacy offers a free mushroom identification service.
“The pharmacist is the guardian of poisons, and in France, they have an important role to play in public health – that is to say, to prevent poisonings,” Joël Boustie dashed off to me via email. Boustie is a mycologist and professor of pharmacognosy, the study of medicines derived from natural sources. He explained, “All students who wish to become pharmacists must learn to recognize mushrooms, most notably the toxic and mortal ones, by theoretical learning and in practice with forest outings and then an exam. Each student has an average of 60 hours of training.”
This training sounds impressive, but the mushroom identification services from pharmacy to pharmacy were as varied as the number of mushroom types I found and carefully dug up from the ground (one pharmacist sternly scolded me for having cut at the stem rather than digging up the entire foot).
One pharmacist muttered something about having seen pamphlets they gave out once, another whipped out Les Champignons, a thick hardcover guide by Roger Phillips. One consulted another colleague, explaining that they hadn’t really looked at mushrooms since their studies, and another tapped furiously into their computer.
In reality, the number of hours of mushroom training varies drastically from region to region – Besançon’s schools provide only 19 hours of theory and zero of practical identification, whereas Dijon offers no theory classes and 15 hours of on-the-ground experience. Additional modules and trainings are available post-graduation, but seeking that mushroom expertise is voluntary.
To categorize a mushroom is almost an impossible task
Despite pharmacists’ role as gatekeeper between life and death when it comes to mushroom consumption, there were 18 incidents of intoxication and two deaths in 2023, says Julien Gravoulet, who is a member of the AMYPHAR (Association des MYcologues PHARmaciens), an organization of pharmacists impassioned by mycology, as well as a professor at IAE Nancy.
“Generally, there are two categories of people who eat foraged mushrooms: Older people who have the habit, a bit of experience with edible mushrooms, and who get confirmation from pharmacies, and then younger people, les urbans, that are a bit less prudent. They tend to use apps to identify mushrooms. In my experience, more than half the time, those apps were wrong,” Gravoulet tells me.
The structure of French culture is demandingly categorical – schools, permitting, and government bodies are rigidly divided into tiers and sections. But to categorize a mushroom is almost an impossible task. Fungi, being neither plant nor animal, blur definitive lines, and identifying species can be notoriously challenging, even for experts. In all my trips to the pharmacy, I sensed that pharmacists’ frustration in not being able to specifically categorize a mushroom was channeled into deeming it inedible.
Determined to get a green light, as soon as I found some mushrooms I’d eaten before – a few giant coulemelles, a large, off-white mushroom that blooms out to resemble an umbrella – I brought them to my local pharmacy. With them, I brought a gift from my neighbor: a short, fat mushroom with a spongy yellow undercap and slightly pink-hued stem, which my neighbor claimed had a delightfully delicate flavor. The pharmacist immediately approved the coulemelles but took a bit longer with the spongy yellow mushroom.
A debate behind the counter ensued and finally Phillips’ book was consulted: Boletus lanatus. Edibility unknown. “Throw it out,” she told me. “Just in case.” I thought of my neighbor, glowing with delight over her foraged gift. But to be on the safe side, I tossed the bolete anyway, thanking my pharmacist.
Mushroom People is, “a magazine for mycophiles”. Come for the psychedelic stories about magic mushrooms, and stay for all the equally mind-bending tales of incredible fungi from around the world.
Cyrena Lee is a freelance writer based between NYC, Paris and Taipei, and sometimes other places. She is interested in holograms, lucid dreaming, meditating, eating hot pot, learning languages, and climbing. She writes the newsletter Discovering Personhood.
Beck O’Hara is a Bristol-based illustrator who loves to use bold colours, wonky shapes and quick lines to create illustrations with a sense of energy and humour. You can see more of Beck’s work on Instagram.