An old tradition finds new life as Germans flock to forests to collect mushrooms

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POTSDAM, Germany (AP) — Wolfgang Bivour carefully emptied a basket of freshly collected mushrooms onto a forest floor covered with fallen autumn leaves. Brown-capped porcini and bay boletes lay beside slimy purple brittlegills and honey-colored armillaria — and, among them, the lethal green death caps.

Bivour, one of Germany's most famous fungi connoisseurs, described the different species just collected in an oak and beech forest on the outskirts of Potsdam in eastern Germany. Surrounding him were 20 people who listened attentively, among them university students, retirees and a Chinese couple with their 5-year-old daughter.

Across Germany, the traditional forest art of mushroom hunting is enjoying a revival, fed by the coronavirus pandemic restrictions, which pushed people from cramped apartments into forests, and by the growing popularity of the vegan lifestyle. A growing interest in the use of medicinal fungi is also playing a role.

While people in rural areas have gone mushroom picking for ages, city dwellers are now also discovering its joys.

Mushroom hunting was a necessity for many Germans in the difficult years after World War II, when people scoured forests for anything edible. But when West Germany's economy started booming in the 1950s, and economic conditions also improved in East Germany, many turned away from the practice.

In recent years, images of mushrooms have gone viral on social media, and a hobby once considered uncool has become a chic lifestyle pastime.

Bivour, a 75-year-old retired meteorologist, said the tour he led on a recent, drizzly autumn day wasn't “primarily about filling your basket — although it’s always nice to find something for the dinner table.”

Instead, he said, it was “about teaching people about the importance of mushrooms in the ecosystem and, of course, about biodiversity.”

Bivour is sometimes sought out by hospitals when they have cases of suspected mushroom poisonings.

He has also been giving mushroom tours in the Potsdam region southwest of Berlin for more than five decades.

When the members of his group showed him mushrooms, he identified them with their German and sometimes their Latin names. He spoke about their healing powers or toxicity, gave suggestions on how to prepare some of them, offered historical anecdotes. He invited them to smell and taste the ones that were not poisonous.

Karin Flegel, the managing director of Urania, a Potsdam institution that organizes Bivour's tours, said his classes are filling up instantly.

“We’ve noticed a huge increase in interest in mushrooms,” she said.

Bivour said he, too, had noticed the surge of interest in his longtime hobby. He began sharing his best finds on Instagram and Facebook, has written books on the subject, and even hosts a popular podcast, the Pilz-Podcast. Pilz is the German word for mushroom.

Many people are embracing their new passion with caution, afraid of accidentally picking and eating poisonous mushrooms.

While the poisonous red-capped, white-dotted fly agaric can be easily identified, the very toxic green death cap is sometimes confused with the common button mushroom, or champignon, which is the most widely sold mushroom in stores across the country.

Each year, several people die after eating death caps, often immigrants from the Middle East who are not familiar with the local mushroom varieties.

Tim Köster, a 25-year-old university student from Berlin who joined the excursion with his girlfriend, said he had never foraged for mushrooms as a child, and is often satisfied with the white button mushrooms in the stores. But he also wants to be able to find and prepare his own porcini mushrooms — considered the most popular delicacy among Germany’s more than 14,000 different kinds of mushrooms.

While porcini are often served in risotto or pasta in Italian cuisine, in Germany porcini, as well as bay boletes, are often fried in butter and eaten on toasted sourdough bread with salt and pepper.

As Köster stood amid an abundance of yellow and red fall foliage, he said that the tour was a good start. But asked if he was ready to start collecting mushrooms on his own, he said: “I don’t dare yet.”

Instead, he said he considers picking mushrooms and taking them to an expert to verify that they are edible. Experts often offer their knowledge on fall weekends at markets or community colleges where people can bring their bounty and make sure they haven't accidentally pick poisonous pieces.

Margit Reimann, a 42-year-old who participated in the tour with her mother, said she was surprised to learn how many edible mushroom varieties there are.

But despite her newly acquired knowledge, she plans to stick to the familiar ones — porcini, butter mushrooms, slippery jacks and bay boletes — when going out to the woods with her kids. During the excursion she learned that colors and grain patterns can't always be clearly determined.

“I think that if enjoyed in moderation, many of them would be a culinary experience, but I still don’t trust myself," she said.