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Mushroom Master: "At least ten mushroom books to be recommended.”

10.09.2009 - 08:47 |  Looduskalender
Photo: Aldo Luud
 
 
On Tuesday Erast Parmasto talks at the Rõuge Mushroom Days on the theme “Should fungi be protected, and how”. Our Senior Mushroom Master has useful things to say about the mushroom books too, that have multiplied on the bookshop display counters in the last few years like mushrooms in autumn. Can we really learn to know mushrooms well enough only by these books? With some enterprising spirit, and a paper bag and a pocket knife always along on forest trips it can be done!

Erast Parmasto, do you remember your first mushroom hunt, the first mushroom? 
I was born in Nõmme town; within our grounds there were pines, bilberries, heather, and mushrooms such as the deer truffle (Elaphomyces granulatus) but also rufous milkcaps. These I could find without any special excursions. The real woods were a few hundred meters away, my mother brought me along on mushroom picking trips several years before I was school-going age.

It seems to me that it is not really possible to learn to recognise mushrooms only by books, it is so much easier with plants. With mushrooms one does need to be guided in the forest by a mushroom expert.
It is definitely not possible without books, the differences between one species and another don’t stay very easily in memory just from guiding and demonstrations. So it is with all other learning, so many of us carry such a lot of acquired helplessness with us. That someone should come and show again and again, explain everything, teach us to become experts. It seems to be a problem particularly for those who pay large fees in higher education; some of them simply demand that intelligent thinking be hammered into their heads. But on the other hand – a wise teacher is always worth having.

Does working with fungi change people in some way, have mushroom experts something in common?
Maybe not just working with fungi, but really seeing and observing – as opposed to just watching, as watching TV – nature can make a difference. To everybody. Being a scientist forces people to honesty, to discard deception, to consider all things critically; if this is not possible to a sufficient degree the scientist will be caught in a split personality or schizophrenic tangle. Some take to drink, others become bad-tempered and mean.

 If fungi make up the third realm, besides the animal and vegetable kingdoms – are you, as Senior Mushroom Master, a citizen of that third realm?
Dividing living nature into a few kingdoms belongs to teaching in elementary school, later, nolens-volens, we have to be more exact in our model of the world. The evolutionary tree of nature has many branches and divisions, far more than three. There is a very nice expression in English for this concept: tree thinking. Sadly a word-by-word translation into Estonian would give us „wooden thinking”, and this expression simply doesn’t work! I see myself as a quite ordinary representative of a somewhat freakish species belonging to the hominids.

 When did the understanding that fungi are quite different from animals and plants reach broader groups?
Really already thousands of years ago. Probably this was why they were left out of the Bible. In Genesis there is no mention of creating fungi, so obviously they were left for the Devil to invent. Estonian universities taught their specialness already more than fifty years ago, elsewhere this understanding came some decades later.

What did our people know about fungi in the old days?
In eastern Estonia a little, maybe some ten-twenty genera or species were recognised. In western Estonia nearly nothing at all – why dignify these slippery sheep and cattle toadstools with individual names.

Which place in Estonia means most to you?
The old broadleaf forest below the chalk cliffs between Saka and Ontika, from 1945; the pine forests in Nõmme, and the Mustamäe juniper dunes, from the time when there were no houses. And a thousand more places.

 Do you always look for fungi in nature?

No, but I see them, notice them (if they are there).
 
 What do you always bring along with you to the forest?
A clasp knife or pocket knife, paper bags, ballpoint pen, curiosity, frequently a notebook too, a GPS, a good map and a magnifying glass.
 
 What are the most important changes in the world during your lifetime: as a scientist, as a human being?
The fact that people haven’t changed their behaviours and beings particularly much over the centuries still amazes me, all else in the world we have, seemingly by chance, made a serious mess of. Ever worse with time.
 
 Does interest in fungi increase or decrease or keep constant in Estonia?
It has increased clearly during the last seven years; partly due to the extremely abundant and very poor mushroom years, to some small extent also tied up with our Estonian blossoming car ownership. But particularly thanks to the many publishers who at long last have ventured to publish mushroom books. Instead of the quite recent total void   today at least ten such books can be recommended: quite good translations as well as creations by our own masters – Kuulo Kalamees, Vello Liiv, Ain Raitviir.
 
 Does Estonia have enough mushroom scientists? Who have been most important in fungus research?
During the last 50 years we have had them, the recruiting is steady enough, we are quite well known internationally. Of the early scientists there are Fedor Bucholtz (1872–1924, in Estonia from 1919), and Elmar Lep(p)ik (1898–1978, in Estonia until 1944).
 
 Is there any area lacking scientists just now?
Everything hasn’t to be done in little Estonia, a good and friendly co-operation helps to fill out the gaps. It is strange that we have – discounting the nearly-pension-aged – no mycologist who would be able to determine the species involved in all the fungus-caused diseases of our cultivated, garden and house plants. Too many parasites get determined so to say by the eye, without further investigation.
 
 From where comes the word “seenestama” [mushrooming]– is it a newly-made word or a forgotten and revived word?
Mycologists were taught this word by the great linguist Paul Ariste, who was a good friend to our mycologists. In his birth place, in Võtikvere parish, this was often used for the doings of someone who knew mushrooms well, and often picked mushrooms.
 
 I heard recently that Germans were amazed that we dare pick mushrooms in our Estonian forests after the Chernobyl incident? What should we tell them?
Immediately after the Chernobyl catastrophe Arvi Liiva investigated the radioactive downfall in Estonian fungi. With other mycologists I myself too took part in the collection of facts as well as making the results public in newspapers and scientific journals. We were lucky, the downfall here was negligible. The doubters should read the literature in this field, a great deal has been published on the subject.
 
 There is probably no sense in asking whether we would manage in this world without mushrooms?
It would be pointless, yes.
 
 Where in the world are there trees growing without fungi (I have understood that in Estonia they don’t manage without fungal mycorrhizas)?
In Estonia they seem not to manage without it, but probably there really aren’t such trees elsewhere either; but in some tree species the fungi grow hidden, mainly within cells and without producing noticeable fruiting bodies.
 
 Has any mushroom  surprised you somehow?
I have been surprised by their beauty and singularity. At the moment I remember a russula growing in North Carolina, in the Great Smoky Mountains, with deeply indigo-blue milk sap.
 
 Your birthday is in the autumn, in the mushroom season, what mushrooms will be on the birthday table?
Special dishes aren’t among my birthday traditions, rather going out in the autumn-coloured forests, weather and health permitting.
 
Our Senior Mushroom Master was interviewed by Helen Arusoo, the interview was published in the October 2008 issue of the journal Loodusesõber.
Translation: Liis

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