Mushroom hunt is better during rain, not shine

Greg Miller has an unusual idea of what constitutes good weather: The more rain, he said, the better.

“With all the sun out here it’s sometimes terrible,” said Miller, a wildlife biologist who volunteers at the Environmental Nature Center in Newport Beach.

This year’s abundance of precipitation has made him a happy man. To show just how happy he has become, Miller recently led the season’s first wild mushroom walk at the center. He hopes to schedule more in the future, but only if the good weather continues. Without rain, the walks are “theoretical mushrooming, which is about as much fun as theoretical swimming,” he said.

The season’s first mushroom walk was anything but theoretical; about 25 participants found almost a dozen species of the moisture-loving fungus.

Looking for mushrooms “is a delightful hunt,” Miller said afterward, because they’re so “ephemeral. You never know what you’ll find. They could be here this week, and next week they’ll be gone. You never know if you’ll come back empty-handed and just have a nice walk in the woods.”

The 90-minute walk began at a picnic table near the front entrance of the plush 3.5-acre nature center in what once was a litter-filled gully on 16th Street next to Newport Harbor High School. It was there that Miller told his audience what rainy weather and good luck could bring.

“There’s a huge variety of shapes, colors, sizes and flavors,” he said of the wild spongy prey. “Some are so delicious that they make you [dizzy]; it’s just a big Easter egg hunt for grown-ups.”

The walk also was a fun exploration for a handful of children who, according to Miller, make the best mushroom hunters.

“They have better eyesight and are closer to the ground,” he explained.

Miller was correct: As the fungus followers plodded single file down the trail, it was the youngsters who spotted some of the most interesting specimens, including shaggy parasol, sulphur shelves, blewitt, coral mushroom, deer mushroom and the more common Agaricus.

Miller estimates that hundreds of species grow in Orange County, including at least 30 at the Environmental Nature Center alone. He knows of only one other place -- the Donna O’Neill Land Conservancy in southern Orange County -- that hosts organized mushroom walks, weather permitting.

“Any place that has good vegetation and rainfall is good for mushrooms,” he said.

Although some mushrooms have hallucinogenic effects, Miller said, most hunters are in it for the taste.

Yet looks can be deceiving. Some species are “edible if you like eating wood,” he said. And others, when ingested, cause a slow and agonizing death.

For that reason, the biologist urges inexperienced mushroom hunters to get help from experts and for experts to exercise care.

“The consequences of eating misidentified mushrooms are ugly, so you need to use your brain,” Miller said. “The first time I identify a mushroom as edible, I throw it away. Maybe I’ll eat it the second time.”

The nature center visitors were not allowed to take their finds home. Yet that prohibition didn’t seem to lessen their enjoyment of the walk.

“We love eating mushrooms,” said Myuriel Von Aspen, 40, who came with her husband and 4-year-old daughter from their Newport Coast home. “We usually buy them at the farmers market.”

Gardner Kilian, 25, of Brea said he’d been hunting mushrooms since he was a kid. “My whole family likes wild mushrooms,” he said. “They’re different from the ones you buy at the store.”

Not everyone was enthralled with the morning’s activities. Audrey Taylor, 11, of Costa Mesa said she came because her mother had made her. “I’d rather be reading,” she admitted.

But what of the tiny tasty morsels?

“I don’t eat mushrooms,” she said. “They make me gag.”

david.haldane@latimes.com