Today on Mushroom Hour we are honored to speak with our distinguished, bespectacled guest Roger Phillips. Roger is a natural nonconformist and a legendary godfather of foraging in the UK. Drawing upon decades of experience, his knowledge of wild food is unrivaled. Known as “Mr Mushrooms” he is an expert mycologist, renowned for his work tracking and recording more than 1,600 species of fungi in North America and Europe. Considered a pioneer in the use of photography for documenting and identifying mushrooms, he has written numerous guide books and resource materials.
Let's take a trip across the Atlantic, and back in time, over to the UK isles to find Roger Phillips at just 8 years old hunting wild nettles and bucket loads of mushrooms. His younger years saw him join the air force, work with a major advertising firm and eventually find his way to photography. As his obsession with documenting nature took hold, Roger began writing his own botanical guidebooks to European plants and mushrooms, and in so doing, was an early pioneer of the use of photography, in lieu of drawings, in his guides.
Roger reflects on the mycophobia that is deeply entrenched in British culture, but also how that is starting to change. There is a rich wild food tradition and has always been an incomparable love of gardening amongst the British people. Roger sees all of these traditions as connected, with gardening and foraging being disciplines that most people innately recognize as "moral" and "good".
Exploring his newest book, "The Worldwide Forager" we end up traveling all over the planet to learn about wild foods across cultures. Roger has a deep interest in First Nation Peoples in the Americas. Through his research on the wild food history of the Nez Pearce we learn about the consumption of wild camas bulbs. How much can we learn from First Nation peoples about wild foods and sustainable gardening? When it comes to mushrooms, we visit Italy to marvel at the oft underappreciated Caesar's amanita and Roger regales us with the story of how it may have been involved in a plot that brought down a Roman Emperor!
As our conversation winds down, we glimpse a future where cross-cultural sharing of wild food traditions leads to a more sustainable, more nutritious and scrummier future!
Directed, Recorded, Produced by: Mushroom Hour
(@welcome_to_mushroom_hour)
Music by: Lyla Foy (https://www.lylafoy.co.uk/)
Art by: Wyn Di Stefano (http://www.wyndistefano.com/)
Episode Resources
Roger Phillips Website: http://www.rogersmushrooms.com/
Roger Phillips IG: https://www.instagram.com/rogerphillips_redglasses/
Worldwide Forager (Book): https://unbound.com/books/the-worldwide-forager/
Nez Perce (Indigenous Tribe): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nez_Perce_people
Amanita Caesarea (Mushroom): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_caesarea
Craterellus Cornucopioides(Mushroom): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craterellus_cornucopioides
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Ep. 136: Biotechnology, Mycelium Materials & The "Art, Science, Society Triad" (feat. Prof. Vera Meyer)
Ep. 135: Wine Forest Wild Foods - Origins and Evolution of America's Wild Mushroom Business (feat. Connie Green)
Ep. 134: Life in Amber - 50-Million-Year-Old Cordyceps & Other Fossilized Fungi (feat. George Poinar Jr. PhD)
Ep. 133: Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge - Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples (feat. Prof. Nancy Turner)
Ep. 132: Community Assembly, Plant-Fungal Associations and Mycorrhizal Ecologies (feat. Dr. Kabir Peay)
Ep. 131: Temptress Truffles, Fruiting Bodies Collective & Compassionate Upliftment (feat. Elan Hagens)
Ep. 130: Fungal Systematics, Mushroom Ancestry & Recognizing Patterns (feat. Dr. Andrew Wilson)
Ep. 129: Regenerative Soil Microscopy: the Book, Course & Database (feat. Matt Powers)
Ep. 128: NYC Mycology, Greenwood Cemetery & DIY DNA Sequencing (feat. Sigrid Jakub)
Ep. 127: Culinary Mushroom Magic & Commercial Foraging Anarchy (feat. Graham Steinruck)
Ep. 126: The Art in Mushroom Cultivation & Embracing the Unknowable (feat. Sam Shoemaker)
Ep. 125: Community Assembly & Fungi that Live in Flower Nectar (feat. Prof. Tadashi Fukami)
Ep. 124: Ali the Fungi Guy - Mushrooms, Joy & Wellbeing (feat. Ali McKernan)
Ep. 123: Mushlabs - Fermentation, Fungi & Foods of the Future (feat. Dr. Mazen Rizk)
Ep. 122: Church of the People for Creator Mother Earth - Authentic, Indigenous, Psychedelic Ceremony (feat. Shane Norte)
Ep. 121: Flora & Fungi Adventures - Campfire Magic, Truffle Tango & the Pursuit of Pleasure (feat. Maria Finn)
Ep. 120: Lichenology - Biodiversity and Evolution of Fungal, Algal Symbiosis (feat. Matthew Nelsen PhD)
Ep. 119: Garden State Mushrooms - Pioneering Cultivation of Beefsteak Mushrooms (feat. Jacob Alvarez)
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