Consider the Bygone Mycological Club (BMC), an organization so old that literally every one of its members has bought the proverbial farm. Lest you think otherwise, this does not prevent those members from foraging for fungi. Quite the contrary. They simply go foraging in their current habitat, which is beneath the ground. Since they’re not governed by circadian rhythms, the weather, seasonality, or 9-5 jobs, they can look for fungi morning, noon, and night.
Yet there’s a downside (so to speak) to their foraging. Being hypogeous themselves, they tend to encounter only hypogeous species such as Gautierias, Mesophillias, and various phycomycetes, none of which is a decent edible. Once in a while, they might find an Elaphomyces truffle, and given their identification skills or lack thereof, they exclaim, Wow! A Perigord truffle! After gnawing on a specimen, however, he or she usually realizes that the species in question isn’t the sort of fare any critter other than a squirrel would eat, much less an item which Sotheby’s, not to mention Walmart’s, would ever sell.
Unlike certain other mycophiles, BMCers don’t forage for medicinal fungi. After all, such fungi don’t have the necessary properties that might bring someone who’s dead back to life. Instead, they look for fleshy fungi, although they never seem to find them. The Club’s President, a woman who refers to all fungi as guys because she doesn’t know Latin binomials, will say, Black trumpets are such nice guys, why do they avoid us? At least nobody is accusing us of overcollecting! Addle Pate, the Club’s foray leader, will sometimes remark.
Every once in a while, one of the Club’s more percipient members will realize that fruiting bodies tend not to be subterranean, so they’ll extend their hands upward, ever upward, hoping to grab a morel or perhaps a chanterelle. Eventually those hands rise above the ground, whereupon their fingers will harden and turn black, thus becoming what’s commonly known as dead man’s finger. Almost nobody who sees one of these Xylaria species has the slightest inkling that it actually belongs to a deceased member of a mushroom club.
