When Think Fungi first launched, it launched with two things: 1) a community for mushroom enthusiasts to interact, share and collaborate, and 2) a mushroom identification course.
Since then we have grown to include many courses, both in person and online, seminars, field trips, private tours, an online shop and more. While we are still a young and small social enterprise, we continue to focus much of our attention on our courses – specifically our identification courses.
We have two identification courses, one is a fantastic beginner’s course for anyone in North America, while our larger course is more regionally tied to the Northeast of North America, but still a relatively great course for all.
Here’s a little more information on those two courses…
Top 10 Edible Mushrooms of North America
We cover the top 10 mushrooms that you can easily identify in nearly any forest in North America. This course is a fantastic jumping off course for first time foragers or those who have kept to the same few species for years.
Whether you’re foraging in the spring, summer or autumn, this course has at least two growing per season. If you’re lucky enough to be living in the southern states, these mushrooms can be found nearly year round!
Learn which mushrooms to target, learn how to identify them, and finally, learn how to cook them. Each mushroom profile is accompanied by a culinary preparation section which describes the best ways to utilize the mushroom, whether roasting, drying, frying, or stewing.
Of course, we will also cover some key foraging principles including conservation, where to forage, and finally, some notes on mushroom poisoning, educating and selling.
When you purchase this course, you’ll also get access to the Think Fungi network where you will be notified whenever new information becomes available on these mushrooms. You’ll also get unlimited access to the course materials and unlimited attempts at testing your knowledge.
26 Edible & Easily Identified Mushrooms
From spring morels to autumn oysters; summer chanterelles and winter chaga, this online course focuses on the most commonly desired, and available mushrooms in our woods and grasslands.
For anyone beginning to forage for edible mushrooms, this course will dive into 26 starter mushrooms, those with very few (if any) toxic look-alikes and how to positively identify each one. We will also cover 4 toxic look-alikes that resemble a few of our edible species, so that we can ensure you are well versed and comfortable with the 26. Thus, this course is actually a 30-mushroom course. A description, photo, identifier information and culinary preparation information is available for all 30 mushrooms.
All the mushrooms are relatively easy to identify in the woods and parks, and you’ll have a smorgasbord of little treasures to discover on your next walk!
Of course, we will also cover some key foraging principles including conservation, where to forage, and finally, some notes on mushroom poisoning, educating and selling.
The content is straight-forward and we guarantee that you will not need a degree in mycology to understand this course. A multiple choice final exam will let you know which mushrooms you can identify positively and which you have yet to grasp. You’ll have unlimited access to this course and unlimited attempts to test your knowledge.
This course was designed for the northeast of North America, but most of the mushrooms can be found throughout the northern hemisphere.
One last thing to note!
The 10 mushrooms covered in the first course are also found in the 30-mushroom course. As such, if you think you’ll want to continue onto the 30-mushroom course at some point, it’s more cost effective to go straight into buying the 30-mushroom course.