To know that is to start to be able to "find" your dinner. all mushrooms are embedded chunk of livingness. And that chunk of nature is very very precise to each sort of mushroom. We could say it is a living signature. The ongoing relationalities of a given type of mushroom is its signature. If you can learn to read an ecological signature, you can find mushrooms anytime, anywhere.Mushrooms always "happen" on or in or near or with clusters of other natural phenomena with an incredible regularity of patterns of relations. This is the second truth. In a mushroom guidebook, you'll read something like this: "X are found on standing sugar maple." "Y are found on newly downed sugar maple". "Z are found on decomposing sugar maple." That's not incidental information, padding the book with useless nods to beloved sugar maples: it's actually information about X, Y and Z. So the first rule of'shroom club: If you want to find mushrooms, learn your trees. The tree that a certain fungi is found on turns out to be a key identifier. If you want to know: is that sexy little orange bonnet thingy growing on that stump an X!!!!? The answer will be a definitive yes or no if you know what kind of stump that is. Better study up on bark in its standing state and its newly cut state and its highly decomposed state. You're going to need to use your hands and your nose. Be a forensic examiner! Get close to the forest. That's just how it works with mushrooms.