The Mushroom Man of Bayfield

[jazzy music]

Arne Martinson: There are thousands of different types of mushrooms in Wisconsin. It’s an incredibly diverse area. My name is Arne Martinson. I am a amateur mycologist from northern Wisconsin.

Arne Martinson: A mycologist is someone who studies mushrooms. Beautiful Amanita muscaria. This is kinda, like, the most famous mushroom in the world. This is the mushroom emoji in your phone. I love mushrooms. I’ve spent the better part of my life studying and trying to understand them better.

Arne Martinson: My property is a great spot for mushrooms. Welcome, everyone. I will be your guide today. What is a mushroom? Mushrooms are the fruiting body of fungi, so they’re essentially just the reproductive part of fungi. And, of course, there’s many delicious ones, many poisonous ones. Now we can get in the woods and find the good stuff.

Arne Martinson: Some of ’em turn bright colors when you cut ’em open, some of ’em bleed milk and all sorts of crazy, crazy features.

Forager 1: Wow!

Forager 2: Oh, that’s pretty. Is that a…?

Arne Martinson: It’s a web cap, a Cortinarius. These are cool. These are little coral mushroom. They’re beautiful, and they come in all different colors.

Forager 3: Love the coral mushrooms. They’re so cool.

Arne Martinson: I have a hundred favorites. The amethyst deceiver is a beautiful purple mushroom that only stays purple right after the rain. It’s one of those things that people think is in the rainforest or in a far-off place, but no. There’s, all these things are right here in Wisconsin and they’re incredible. You know, there’s so many vibrant colors and things that you would not expect to find in amongst the leaves in the Northwoods.

Arne Martinson: This way, sorry for the mud. It won’t be that bad. This is one of what we call the waxy caps, and it’s not eaten at all. In fact, this one’s a PYP mushroom. So, make you “Poop Your Pants.” You don’t want this mushroom. But all the waxy caps are super florescent, brightly colored, orange or yellow or red.

Arne Martinson: We’re about to be moving into sort of a rare environment for this area, which is a cedar hemlock swamp environment. And so we’ll see really unique mushrooms there.

Arne Martinson: There’s a moment where it just kind of clicks for ’em, where they realize, like, “Oh, I’ve ignored an entire kingdom on this planet.” And suddenly, they open their eyes and it’s really wonderful.

Forager 3: [gasps] Whoa!

Arne Martinson: Oh, here we go. These are parrot mushrooms. And if you guys like, we can take a photo of them real quick. So that is the black parrot mushroom, and super sought after by mushroom nerds for its beauty, and rarely seen because it’s so hard to see ’em. There’s always a surprise. Every single day, I find something that just blows my mind out in the woods. It’s very cool.

[blue jay calling]

Arne Martinson: This is a fantastic example of the eastern destroying angel. But this is one of only two deadly mushrooms we have in Wisconsin. And if we extract it kinda carefully from the base, you can see…

Forager 4: Whoa!

Arne Martinson: …this beautiful, beautiful mushroom.

Forager 5: Oh, my gosh!

Arne Martinson: Isn’t that just, like, gorgeous? Extremely poisonous though, so we can leave it behind. [chuckles]

Arne Martinson: I had someone the other day tell me that they never looked at mushrooms until my class, and now it’s all they do out in the woods, and they saw a salamander for the first time. Ooh, you got a little newt, look at that! Beautiful. This is a salamander or a newt. Have any of you never seen one of these before?

Forager 5: I’ve never seen one of these.

Forager 6: Never seen one.

Forager 5: Really?

Arne Martinson: We talk about the plants, the wildlife. You really get a sense of, you know, the whole ecosystem. I just love every minute in the woods. It’s a dream job to be able to be in the woods and to be showing people things that fascinate me. I love watching people experience things that bring me joy as well.

[relaxing music]