Learn About Local Mushrooms with This Chicago Fungus-Spotting Club
"You slow down and look at all of the little things."
If you were traumatized by The Last of Us or just a little too adventurous in college, you might fear the fungus among us. “People want to know, ‘Is this mushroom dangerous? Will it kill me?’” says Chicago mushroom enthusiast Dylan Taylor. While there are a few poisonous mushrooms that grow in Illinois, most local mushrooms are harmless—and they play an essential role in our ecosystem. That’s what inspired the Northern Mycology Club, a group committed to mushroom education.
Dylan founded the club in 2021 at Northern Michigan University, where he co-hosted mushroom-hunting excursions with partner Mead Taylor. The pair married and moved to Chicago last year, bringing the Northern Mycology Club with them. Now the nature nerds of Chicagoland can enjoy the club’s free, family-friendly outings.
The Northern Mycology Club hosts meetups at local nature preserves, parks, and other outdoor areas where you’ll likely find fungi sprouting from the ground or growing on trees. You can expect a slow meander on pavement, grass, and dirt paths while Dylan and Mead enthusiastically identify local plants, insects, and, of course, fungi—and there’s no mushroom left behind.
“We stop for every single mushroom we see, even if it’s not edible, even if you can barely see it,” Mead says. At a recent meetup in Forest Glen Woods, the group spotted turkey tail mushrooms, a pheasant’s back mushroom, and a mushroom called “chicken of the woods,” thanks to its meat-like texture and flavor.
While some local mushrooms are delicious and safe to eat, you won’t be chowing down on fungi at most Northern Mycology Club meetups—many of their excursions take place at nature preserves, where foraging is off-limits.
“We focus less on what you can eat and more on how mushrooms are beneficial to their environment,” Mead explains. “We talk about how mushrooms contribute to essential processes.” One of those processes is decomposition. Along with bacteria, fungi break down organic matter like dead wood, releasing carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus into the soil, which provides vital nutrients to plant life.
“[Fungi open] our eyes to a world that’s existed for millions of years and will continue to do so, regardless of human infrastructure, destruction, or the anthropocentric ideals that still permeate our culture,” Dylan says. “People get way more engaged with nature when they start noticing mushrooms.”
Teal Bradley, a returning participant at the club’s Forest Glen Woods meetup, agrees. “What I love about these meetups is that you slow down and look at all of the little things—the bugs, the plants, the mushrooms—and you feel like you’re exploring,” Bradley says. “I didn’t know much about mushrooms at first, and I’m learning a lot—not just about mushrooms, but about birds, plants, animals, and how everything lives together.”
Bradley knows firsthand that if you attend a Northern Mycology Club meetup, you just might make a discovery. Dylan and Mead document their findings on iNaturalist, a social network where anyone can share photos of plants, animals, fungi, and more—and they encourage their meetup attendees to get in on the action. At his first meetup, Bradley spotted a tiny, cup-like fungus from the genus Merismodes and became the second person in Illinois to observe and document the fungus on iNaturalist. The first observer? Dylan, of course.
Head here for info on the next Northern Mycology Club meetup, and to learn more about the Northern Mycology Club, visit their website or Instagram.