Mary Vinograd of Bethesda wants to eat wild mushrooms.
But not until she learns more about the sometimes poisonous fungi, she said.
Vinograd was one of about 15 hikers to attend a mushroom walk Sunday morning hosted by the Potomac Conservancy at the C&O Canal near Lock 8 in Potomac.
The walk, along with a medicinal plant walk, were both popular last year, so the conservancy chose to bring them back this summer, said Lydia Tukarski, the conservancy’s communication manager.
The walks are enjoyable because they introduce walkers to flora they may not normally notice, Tukarski said.
The conservancy, a Silver Spring-based nonprofit committed to preserving the Potomac River and its tributaries, hosts free educational walks May through October.
By engaging people in their environment with events such as the walks, they learn to love it, and then they want to protect it, Tukarski said.
Vinograd took notes as Buddy Kilpatrick, a mushroom enthusiast of Arlington, Va., told the group what to look out for.
“[I’m learning] how to keep from killing myself, and my family,” Vinograd said, laughing.
Kilpatrick also brought mushrooms with him, and held up a bolete, one of the best-tasting kinds, he said. But if a bolete has a red sponge on the bottom of its cap and turns blue when you scratch it, it’s probably poisonous, he said.
Kilpatrick has been eating wild mushrooms for 30 years. He reminded the group there are no set rules for which mushrooms are safe to eat out of the more than 20,000 kinds total.
Vinograd said mushrooms intrigue her.
“My father was big on survival, and what we would do if we were stuck in the wild,” she said.
Kilpatrick has no related, formal education. Instead, he learned about mushrooms by joining clubs such as the Mycological Association of Washington, a nonprofit organization that shares information about fungi, and eating them because, well, he was hungry.
“I would go trout fishing, and I kept running out of things to eat.”
He collects about 10 pounds of mushrooms annually. There are a few hot spots in the county, but he wouldn’t reveal them.
“Those are my secret places,” he said.
jbondeson@gazette.net
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