Guided Mushroom Walk: Summer Mushrooms

Join me on a guided mushroom walk in Pittsburgh's Hartwood Acres to learn about summer mushrooms. Mushroom season will be in full swing and the woods will be filled with a wide variety of mushrooms! Provided we get some rain soon, we will see chanterelles like the smooth chanterelle (Cantharellus lateritius), the cinnabar chanterelle (Cantharellus cinnabarinus) or the eastern black trumpets (Craterellus fallax). We will encounter amanitas like the American blusher (Amanita amerirubescens), yellow American blusher (Amanita flavorubens) or American Amidella (Amanita volvata). Boletes will be abundant, including the bitter bolete (Tylopilus felleus) and the bouillon bolete (Lanmaoa pallidorosea), as well as Leccinum and Lecinellum species. We’ll likely see some milky caps (Lactarius) and brittlegills (Russulas).

Location & Time

This walk will be held in Hartwood Acres Park on Saturday, July 23 at 9:30 a.m. We will do a 2- to 3-mile loop from the Hartwood Acres Park Parking lot.

Attendance is limited to 12 people so that we can be in a small group and interact closely.

📍 Meet at the Hartwood Acres Park Parking lot at 4100 Middle Rd, Allison Park, PA 15101 at 9:30 a.m.

What to Expect

✅ Things we’ll do:

• Walk the trails looking for mushrooms, stop to look at them, and learn about their ecology, characteristics, and properties.
• Compare similar mushrooms side by side to learn how to differentiate between them.
• Discuss mushroom foraging, mycology, and why we love fungi!
• Learn about some tips and tricks for mushroom photography.

👎 Things we won’t do:

• Forage for mushrooms.
• Remove or damage any trees, shrubs or plants.

💎 How to make the most out of this walk:

• Dress appropriately for the weather. Wear layers and good shoes.
• Bring a notebook to take notes. You may want to start a special mushroom notebook!
• Take pictures of the mushrooms we talk about. You can then upload these to iNaturalist and start building your species list of mushrooms you can identify.
• Look up the walk location ahead of time and figure out your timing. Give yourself a little extra time to find us at the location.
• Walks with me are very hands on and participatory. Don't be afraid to look closely, pull things apart, smell, taste (spit it out after) and thoroughly take advantage of the opportunity. Questions and comments are welcome during class. That is why I keep class sizes small!

This walk is part of a series of guided mushroom walks I’ll be holding this year in the Pittsburgh area. My goal for these walks is to span seasons and places around Pittsburgh so that you can learn about a wide variety of mushrooms when they are in their prime. These classes are open to everyone, regardless of experience.

Teacher Bio

This class will be taught by me, Barbora Batokova, aka @fungiwoman. I created FUNGIWOMAN in 2018 as a photography passion project to foster learning about mushrooms. My goal is to help people discover the beauty and benefits of fungi, inspire them to start mushroom hunting and go on foraging adventures, and create delicious meals with wild mushrooms. I create daily educational posts on my Instagram account and publish mushroom recipes and mushroom profiles on my website fungiwoman.com.

I was born in the Czech Republic, where I grew up mushroom hunting around our family summer house in South Bohemia. That’s where my passion for mushrooms began. Since 2018, I’ve been actively studying mushrooms in Pennsylvania and in 2021 I became an official mushroom identifier for the Western Pennsylvania Mushroom Club (WPMC).

Visit fungiwoman.com to learn more.

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COVID PROTOCOL: We will be following local and state COVID protocols. Please stay home if you are experiencing any symptoms of illness. You can request a refund. Since we will be outdoors, masks are optional.