A little reason to celebrate
National Mushroom Hunting Day
Hobby · Nature · May 17
A day for mushroom hunting: walking woods and fields to find, look closely at and identify wild fungi in their natural setting.
National Mushroom Hunting Day falls on Monday, May 17, 2027. That is 202 days away.
Mushroom hunting means walking slowly through woods, meadows or even a city park and looking for fungi. Some people hunt to identify what they find, some to photograph it, and some simply to see how many kinds turn up on one damp afternoon.
The pace is different from an ordinary hike. You look down a lot. You notice rotting logs, the bases of old trees and patches of moss that you would usually step past. A mushroom is only the visible part of a fungus. Most of the organism lives underground or inside wood as a web of thin threads, and the mushroom pops up to release spores.
The variety surprises newcomers. There are flat shelves stacked on tree trunks, tiny caps no bigger than a fingernail, puffballs that look like dropped golf balls, and coral shapes in orange or white. Experienced hunters check the cap, the gills or pores underneath, the stem and what the mushroom is growing on. Some make a spore print by leaving a cap on paper overnight to see the color of the dust it drops.
Many wild mushrooms are toxic, and some dangerous ones closely resemble edible kinds, which is why careful hunters treat looking and eating as two separate hobbies. Plenty of people never pick anything at all and come home with a camera roll instead.
Rain helps. A walk a day or two after a good soaking often turns up mushrooms on ground that looked bare the week before.
Ways to celebrate
- Take a slow walk in a nearby park and look for mushrooms.
- Photograph mushrooms where they grow instead of picking them.
- Make a spore print from a store-bought mushroom cap on paper.
- Look for a local mycological club walk open to beginners.
- Borrow a regional mushroom field guide from the library.
Dates
| Year | Date |
|---|---|
| 2026 | Sunday, May 17 |
| 2027 | Monday, May 17 |
| 2028 | Wednesday, May 17 |
| 2029 | Thursday, May 17 |
| 2030 | Friday, May 17 |
Also on May 17
Categories: Hobby daysNature days