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Sycamore Grove/Veterans Park, Livermore, CA
Saturday, January 16, 2016

Sycamore Grove straddles Arroyo Del Valle Creek, which flows out of del Valle Reservoir, and this wet zone provides the best habitat for mushrooms, especially when dam releases keep the water flowing. Each year, this event has grown in popularity and reflects the enthusiasm of Ranger Amy Wolitzer for mushroom education within the park. Co-sponsored by LARPD and BAMS, "Mushroom Madness", as Amy calls it, is always a rich experience for attendees.

This year, about 50 people showed up in hope of finding and learning about mushrooms. They weren't disappointed. We explored the riparian habitat in the creek bed. We wandered into the grasslands and down a new trail into oak woodlands. Some folks started finding mushrooms on rotting logs, then turned them over to find more. Brightly colored wood-decaying fungi clung to the bark surface. Other tiny mushrooms were found in the adjacent grassland. People started looking more closely, and mushrooms appeared everwhere.

The Park is noted for the mature Western Sycamore trees that occupy the ancestral flood plain. Del Valle Reservoir was built in 1968 and the 742 acre Sycamore Park was set aside in 1975. This is a unique habitat, and unusual fungi often appear at our event.

The best part of Mushroom Madness happens when people absolutely new to mycology are introduced to wild mushrooms for the first time — and begin to find them on their own. Learning how mushrooms grow and why, their beauty, and their ornate structures — brings people to a new understanding of the complexity of nature. Ranger Amy Wolitzer says, "One of my favorite things is by the end everyone has a deepened appreciation of mushrooms - everyone from the 'newbies' (who never realized there was more to a mushroom than the above ground part), the fungiphobic (who thought they could be poisoned by touching them) and even experienced mushroom foragers who may have previously only been interested in edibles."