The mushroom season should already be in full swing, but the undergrowth is still very dry. Porcini mushrooms are there, but chanterelles and trumpets of death are waiting for more favorable conditions to come out.
The Interceltic Festival of Lorient 2022 –
Late season is beautiful in Burgundy and the forests will soon be putting on their autumn clothes, but mushrooms are not a legion in the forests of the Côte-d’Or, as specialists have noted.
The hot summer was disastrous for the mushrooms, but the rains that fell in mid-August allowed the start of a season that does not look great., according to Joël Marceaux, president of the Côte-d’Or Mycological Society. “The soils are too dry to allow chanterelles to escape, whose preferred period is from June to October – or even November, depending on when the first frosts arrive. Chanterelles need a soil moisture level of 60% and it is difficult to reach 40% there.“, Complains the specialist, who believes itpart of the harvest season is lost for this mushroom.
But fortunately, not all mushroom species require the same humidity conditions to grow. When conditions are favorable and it has rained enough, mushrooms can make a quick push, a sudden rebirth with nice volumes, explains the mycologist. The stormy episode of August 15 was beneficial in some places, provided it rained regularly every 10 days to allow the mushrooms to continue to emerge and develop. “Unlike the eastern sector of the Côte-d’Or, such as the forest of Cîteaux which experienced a “desert” summer, some sectors further west such as Châtillonnais or Auxois received sufficient and fairly regular rainfall to allow for good harvests. In these woods we currently find porcini mushrooms, amanitas di Cesare or the pquilted olypore (Grifola frondosa) also called “hen of the woods”all three edible“, he clarifies.”In the more open areas it is also possible to see roses or mushrooms nearby, two edible species that can be eaten raw.“.
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We have lost 80% of the volume of mushrooms in our crops
Joël Marceaux, president of the Côte-d’Or Mycological Society
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The life cycles of trees and fungi are therefore closely linked when trees suffer, mushrooms suffer toocomplains the mushroom lover. “With the repeated droughts we have experienced in recent years, many trees get sick and fall for nothing. As the climate evolves, forests change, which has an undeniable impact on mushroom populations. We see about an 80% decline in the volume of mushrooms in our crops. for a few years, but fortunately there are few losses in the number of species“. Among the victims of the drying up of the undergrowth, the remarkable cortinaire (A curtain) or the varieties of tricholomas, which almost no longer meet.
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On the other hand, some species of mushrooms appreciate the heat, so thermophilic species appear in our latitudes, which were once found only in the south of France. This is the case of the Bolet des Emiles (Emilian mushroom Barber shop) which was first seen in 1901 in Côte-d’Or da Maurizio Barbieri and that has been reappearing since the 1980s.
The climate changes and the periods of appearance of mushrooms change with the season. “For grapes, the harvest is always early, having fun Joel Marceauxfor mushrooms, it’s the other way around“, but isn’t there a risk that the mushroom season will be reduced to a thread, interrupted by the first frosts of November? …
For those who want to appreciate the freshly harvested specimens and learn more about the edible species that can be easily confused with others, less tasty if not toxic, meet the members of the Mycological Society of the Côte-d’Or at the Faculty of Sciences of Dijon for an exhibition on 15 and 16 October 2022.
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