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Updated: December 23, 2024 @ 1:57 pm
Steven Landseadel, left, shows mushrooms to Anne Do, right, during a mushroom tour in Brooksville on Nov. 24.
Steven Landseadel leads a mushroom identification tour near McKethan Lake in the Withlacoochee State Forest near Brooksville.
Steven Landseadel holds a mushroom commonly known as southern chicken of the woods.
Steven Landseadel, left, shows mushrooms to Anne Do, right, during a mushroom tour in Brooksville on Nov. 24.
Steven Landseadel leads a mushroom identification tour near McKethan Lake in the Withlacoochee State Forest near Brooksville.
Steven Landseadel holds a mushroom commonly known as southern chicken of the woods.
BROOKSVILLE — Growing up in Pasco County back when it was mostly cow pastures, Steven Landseadel tromped through ranchland with his fishing pole seeking the best ponds for bass. The ranchers came to know the boy and allowed it.
When some older kids found out Landseadel had a free pass to be in the fields, their ears perked up. “Ever see any mushrooms growing out there — on cow poop?” He sure did. A whole lot of them.
That is how Landseadel, at age 8, became a regular supplier of psychedelic mushrooms to the local teenagers who paid him in bait.
“I had no idea what magic mushrooms were,” Landseadel, now 50, said recently. “Of course, I learned a couple years later. … Picking them is actually a felony.”
On a recent Sunday, 25 people who’d paid $35 each gathered at McKethan Lake in the Withlacoochee State Forest so Landseadel could guide them on his Igas Tours Pre-Thanksgiving Mushroom Foray, a stroll through the woods in search for edible mushrooms — legal ones, which he has focused on for the past decade.
It was about as perfect a Florida day as exists, 60 degrees and sunny with the blue sky reflecting on the still water.
“I wish we would have gotten some rain,” Landseadel said. He always hopes for rain. Rain brings mushrooms. “I chase the rain all over the east coast. If it’s not raining, I’m actually miserable.”
Last year, Florida’s historic drought drove him north to New York for much of the year. A rainy 2024 had brought him back south, for now.
“I live on the road,” he said, bouncing around between friends’ homes — many of them mushroom people — and working mushroom festivals between his own tours.
Landseadel hikes 10 to 15 miles a day and ranks among the top 25 pickers on the iNaturalist app, out of more than 7 million users. When he’s not hiking, he’s scanning dozens of Facebook groups identifying mushrooms for people. For a while, he focused on sales, selling 20 pounds of chanterelles per week to suppliers in North Carolina. His wild mushroom safety certification allows him to sell foraged mushrooms in the states that require it. (Florida does not require certification).
The popularity of mushrooms has grown steadily since the pandemic. Sales of mushrooms for cooking are up, and a variety of new mushroom coffees, mushroom chocolates and other mushroom products boast health benefits. Mushrooms have trended as a theme in home decor.
The tour group Sunday ranged in age from 24 to 66. Some brought their own woven baskets. Part of the fascination with mushrooms, and the difficulty with identifying them, is their incredible diversity. Around 14,000 kinds have been described, but there are likely many more.
The group followed Landseadel onto the trail around the lake, tantalized by the possibilities. The guide stopped and pointed up high on an oak tree.
“Lion’s mane,” Landseadel said. “Up to about four years ago, we didn’t think it grew this far south. Things are always changing.”
Anne Do, 30, had driven 90 minutes from St. Petersburg with two friends. She finds fungi “biologically fascinating,” and tried growing pink oyster mushrooms at home in a tub of coffee grounds, though they kept getting moldy.
“I could nerd out,” she said, “but really, the main thing with mushrooms is they just look so cool.”
Do touched a mushroom that looked like a thick, orange, scalloped pancake — a southern chicken of the woods, or laetiporus gilbertsonii var. pallidus, which Landseadel had found growing on an oak tree near his parents’ home in Pasco County earlier that morning. It’s a tree parasite.
“It feels like skin,” she said.
“Genetically, fungi share more DNA with animals than plants,” Landseadel said, “so they’re closer to meat.”
“That’s freaky,” said Kevin Phan, 31.
Walking deeper into the woods, Landseadel said the group was approaching one of his favorite trees for chicken of the woods. He keeps about 250 trees in his memory, he said, all over the east coast. Once you’ve found mushrooms on or around a tree, you can find them there again.
He found the tree with “chickens” on it, but they were old and dry. Not good to eat.
A young one tastes like chicken and a hint of lemon, but mostly it tastes like mushroom.
“They all taste like mushrooms,” he said. “I have to remind people. If a mushroom tastes like something, it tastes like that, plus mushrooms.”
There are a handful of species in this part of Florida that are desirable for eating — chanterelles and milk caps, to name a couple — and many, many others that aren’t toxic but aren’t food, Landseadel said.
“When people ask if they’re edible I say, ‘Well, they’re not poisonous.’”
He crouched down and snapped off an example from a log, a type of crust fungus he calls “bacon of the woods” for its long wavy lines. On another log, he pointed to some Hexagonia hydnoides. He calls them “squirrel carpets.” They’re a wood decayer that he pictures squirrels using as a doormat. The group ran their fingers along their bristly surfaces.
Poisonous mushrooms exist in Florida. Some won’t kill you, but will make you wish you were dead. Others can be fatal, like Florida’s most toxic mushroom, the destroying angel, an all-white type of Amanita that grows in the classic mushroom shape.
People interested in foraging mushrooms should go out with someone experienced and start with a species that would be hard to misidentify, Landseadel said, like the nutty-flavored hedgehogs, named for the spiny texture under their caps.
He hates the artificial intelligence apps that identify mushrooms from photos. He said he has seen generative AI on search engines respond to questions about toxic mushrooms with recipes that could really hurt someone.
Nathaniel Johnson, 34, had traveled from Tampa, where he’s a researcher working on a PhD in chemistry at the University of South Florida. He got the mushroom bug years ago when he saw a huge brown mushroom growing in the middle of the beach sand on a campus volleyball court.
“I had to know what it was,” he said of what turned out to be an old man of the woods. “Once you start seeing mushrooms, you can’t stop.”
“We’ve got stump puffballs,” Landseadel yelled, upon spotting a cluster of the ball-shaped sacs on a fallen oak. Before they produced spores, they would have been edible and reminiscent of tofu.
“The Latin name for these means ‘farts on wood’.” He poked them with a stick and they released a puff of brown spores that hung in the air like smoke. “Wooh!” someone shouted. “That’s what the people want!”
Landseadel spotted something white and lacey on a dead branch and bent to remove it with his pocketknife. Tremella fuciformis, or snow fungus. Cooked in syrup, he said, it would come out like fruit chews. He placed it in his basket.
The tour wrapped up near the picnic area. The guests didn’t have much in their baskets, but that was okay. Landseadel has learned that people don’t care about collecting a huge haul, they just want to get outside and learn.
After they thanked him profusely and headed back to the parking lot, he sat at a picnic table and reminded himself that he’s living the dream, even though his livelihood depends on the unpredictable ups-and-downs of nature.
“There are times when it’s been really dry, and I’m not finding anything, which means no tours, which means no money. I’m living in my car, sleeping at Walmarts,” he said. “Then I’ll do a tour like this, and these people who literally own yachts will tell me, ‘You’re so lucky. I wish I could do what you do.’”
He smiled and breathed in the cool air.
Steven Landseadel books tours through his website at igas-tours.com, and through his Facebook page, IGAS Tours.
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