Our forests at your fingertips

Next season, visit our forests. Sign up for our excursions:

• May 17 in Eastern Townships focusing also on spring wild plants
• July 27 in Eastern Townships
• July 19 in the Laurentians
• August 2 and September 6 in Mauricie

More announcements will follow: long live local tourism!

Excursions

Grow it yourself!

During the workshop on Sunday morning, June 15, our expert will explain how to cultivate on logs, in raised beds, or in gardens. The encounter includes a hands-on exercise. Finally, each participant leaves with a kit to cultivate on their own. An event not to be missed!

Cultivation

Focus on Morels - Free Event

On the morning of April 13, Judith Noël-Gagnon introduces you to the biology, cultivation, and harvesting of morels. Experienced pickers, Romain Chesnaux and Josée Kaufmann (joining via Zoom from Morocco), take you along on a foraging expedition through the burned-over landscapes of British Columbia. Free but registration is required.

Zoom

Photography Workshop

On July 18 and 20, join the mushroom photography workshop with seasoned photographier and author Jean Després. Learn macro photography techniques, lighting, and depth of field during a Zoom session on July 18 followed by a hands-on forest hike on July 20. (Hosts are bilingual but writen material is in French.)

Photography

City Dweller

The pavement agaric (Agaricus bitorquis) enjoys the fresh air. From May through fall. it breaks through compacted soils of our cities, squeezing between the pavement. It has many look-alikes in its genus, foremost among them the famous buttons mushroom (A. bisporus). Their gills change from pale beige, sometimes with a pinkish hue, to dark brown as they mature.

In northeastern America, most agarics are edible except, among others, the flat-capped agaric (A. placomyces). This one is toxic and is distinguished by the fine brown or black scales on its cap.

The pavement agaric, which is fleshy and has a nutty taste, makes for delicious grilled dishes and pairs wonderfully with omelets. Basic precaution in urban areas: avoid picking from contaminated soil.

Veggies & Mushrooms side by side

Wine caps (Stropharia rugosoannulata), labelec the garden giants, are favorites among beginners for their yield. They thrive in straw-enriched soil and even promote the growth of nearby plants.

Blewits (Lepista nuda) and shaggy manes (Coprinus comatus) flourish on a bed of leaves, compost, and the cool temperatures of late summer, making them rape for harvesting.

Morels (Morchella) are prized by experienced growers. Planted in the ground after thaw or in automn, they are harvested when the leaves are beginning to reappear.

Not an April's Fool Sale: 30% discount

Spores Trips

The reproduction of mushrooms relies on the dispersal of their spores—microscopic and highly resistant seed-like structures. Their itinerary varies with the means of transport. Spores released from a mature mushroom typically falls less than a meter away. Those carried by foragers are scattered along their path. Winds can blow spores far and high; their total weight in the atmosphere is estimated at 50 megatons per year.

Public transportation breakthrough

The Metropolitan Transportation Agency (MTA) is planning a major extension of the Montreal metro. With a cost of $14 billion, the so-called pink line will carry 250,000 passengers daily on a 29-kilometer underground route between a peripheral neighborhood, Montreal-Nord, and downtown. To select the optimal route, the agency turned to Mycoboutique, recognized specialist in fungal neuroscience.

Myxomycetes, similar to mushrooms in many ways, exhibit extraordinary intelligence in finding their food in a maze. Mycoboutique has mobilized one particular species, Physarum polycephalum, to trace the extension: this slime mold explores all possible paths, retracts from the less productive ones, and extends over the most nourishing.

By scattering food on a map of carbon dioxide concentration between downtown and Montreal-Nord, the blob draws the shortest line between human activity hubs, avoiding green spaces.