Scientist explains why Czechs love mushrooms so much — and why some nations fear them

Historian and anthropologist Karel Šíma of the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague has explained why some nations have eagerly gathered mushrooms for centuries while others won't touch them even during famine. According to him, Czechs are among Europe's most passionate mushroom foragers: long-running statistics show that about three-quarters of Czech households go picking mushrooms every year.

Nations that love mushrooms, and those that fear them

Back in the 1920s, American banker Robert Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina Pavlovna, an emigrant from Russia, coined a division of nations into "mycophilic" (mushroom-loving) and "mycophobic" (mushroom-fearing) cultures. The spark was an episode on their honeymoon in the Catskill Mountains in the United States: Valentina Pavlovna spent whole days gathering mushrooms in the forest and cooking them for her husband in the evening, while he refused to eat them, horrified.

It turned out this wasn't a matter of personal quirk but of cultural tradition. Slavic and Baltic peoples have traditionally treated mushrooms as a gift of the forest — in folklore, spirits and fairy-tale creatures such as the leshy help people find the best mushrooms. In the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon tradition, by contrast, mushrooms were associated with danger: the rings in which certain mushroom species grow were considered places where fairies could lure a person in and make them lose track of time. That honeymoon episode ended up launching an entirely new academic discipline — ethnomycology.

Why one nation fears what another loves

Researchers later found the picture to be more complicated than a simple "Slavs love them, Anglo-Saxons fear them." In the mountainous regions of southern Germany, Italy and France — where, by the general logic, fear of mushrooms should have prevailed — locals actually forage for them eagerly, and the higher into the mountains, the stronger the love of mushrooms. Southern France still has a rich stock of folk names for mushrooms, pointing to long-standing, thorough knowledge of local species, whereas in the north of the country far fewer people know them. High French cuisine recognizes only cultivated button mushrooms and does not use wild ones, while in many rural regions mushrooms were for centuries considered "the poor man's meat." Scandinavia and England, meanwhile, remain so mycophobic that mentions of eating mushrooms there appear only in connection with war and famine — as a measure of last resort.

According to Šíma, the explanation should be sought in the history of forest law. Where the forest belonged to the nobility and ordinary people were forbidden to enter it, knowledge of edible mushrooms simply couldn't be passed down from generation to generation. In England, kings restricted their subjects' access to royal forests to preserve game for their own hunting — unlike in Slavic lands. The earliest known source on forest law that mentions mushrooms is a 16th-century Lithuanian legal code, which explicitly allowed women and children to go into the forest for firewood, berries and mushrooms. This was standard practice, and knowledge about mushrooms was passed down to the next generations specifically through women.

Another hypothesis concerns mass deforestation, which took place in England as early as the Middle Ages — people simply lost their connection with the forest. In Eastern Europe, by contrast, vast, sparsely developed forests survived far longer, in places into the modern era, and going into the forest remained part of everyday food gathering.

Czechia — a nation of mushroom foragers

About three-quarters of Czech households go mushroom picking every year — this statistic has been tracked for more than thirty years, and according to Šíma, no comparable continuous data exists for other countries, which in itself speaks to the exceptional popularity of mushroom hunting specifically in Czechia.

Every European country has its own mushroom legislation — usually limiting the amount of mushrooms one is allowed to take out of the forest. Austria, for example, has a clear rule: no more than two kilograms of mushrooms per person per day. Czechia is one of the most liberal countries in this respect: mushroom picking is treated as non-commercial use of the forest, and for personal needs a forager may take away a virtually unlimited amount. Strict rules apply to commercial picking, including a mandatory demonstration of mushroom knowledge. There is also a red list of protected species — for instance, finding a royal bolete, classified as a vulnerable species, in your basket can get you fined if an inspector checks it.

Back in the 19th century, mushrooms were a regular part of the diet: dozens of species were gathered and prepared in all sorts of ways, and people went into the forest specifically "for mushrooms" rather than just "to the mushrooms" — much like going to the store for groceries. Families kept the locations where certain species grew secret and passed them down as an inheritance, like family silver, because their food supply literally depended on it. It was only with the growth of cities and urbanization at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries that going "to pick mushrooms" turned into a separate weekend pastime. Mycologist František Smotlacha, founder of the Czech Mycological Society, played a notable role in this by linking mushroom hunting with the then-popular tourism and outdoor activity movement, including through the Club of Czech Tourists.

Incidentally, Šíma debunks the myth that mushrooms can replace meat: fresh mushrooms are mostly water, and despite their useful minerals, fiber and vitamins, in nutritional value they are far closer to spices than to a full substitute for meat.

Mushrooms are back in fashion — now as a symbol of ecology

Modern Czechs love cottage life and forest walks, have an excellent network of hiking trails, and, crucially, have retained unrestricted access to forests regardless of who owns them. At the same time, family tradition still plays a key role: even with the internet, field guides and mycological consultations available, most people rely on knowledge passed down from parents and grandmothers. Knowledge of where mushrooms grow can't be handed down by an outsider — it is always local experience tied to a particular family and a particular ecosystem.

According to Šíma, identifying mushrooms requires a "multi-sensory" approach: you need to see exactly where the mushroom is growing, smell it, check whether it changes color when cut, and sometimes even taste it — none of which can be learned from a photo online. That is precisely why he considers identifying mushrooms from photos in apps or online groups dangerous: it is often simply impossible to determine a species precisely from a single picture. That said, surveys show that social media hasn't changed the actual number of foragers — their numbers in Czechia have remained stable for decades.

What is changing, however, is the attitude toward mushrooms as a phenomenon: in recent years interest in them has been growing in connection with ecological crises, global warming and the theme of sustainability — and this wave is coming even from Anglo-Saxon countries, historically mycophobic. Over the past twenty years, subcultural communities have emerged there that see mushrooms not just as food but as a way of sourcing sustenance independently, "outside the supermarket," and dedicated "mushroom festivals" are now held as well. According to Šíma, mushrooms remind us that we are part of a single ecosystem, dependent on the interconnection of countless organisms. There is a flip side too: in recent years mushrooms have increasingly become an image of anxiety and apocalyptic scenarios in films and TV series, as in The Last of Us, for example — further proof that mushrooms have long since spread beyond the kitchen and become part of culture on many different levels.

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Source: seznamzpravy.cz