“When I was five, I really loved mushrooms. I loved them so much, I took a bright red toadstool home from kindergarten. I put it in my snack bag. I cried when my mom threw it in the garbage. I used to kick over every mushroom I saw. I believed that it would help their spores fly around and make new mushrooms. Each time I saw a mushroom, I would go and kick it over – even if it was in someone’s yard or across the street.

My favorite mushrooms were like the one on which this Hypocrea pulvinata is growing. There was a small forest near my elementary school, and these little shelf-like mushrooms peppered the tree trunks. I would collect fallen berries, nuts, twigs, leaves, and rocks and display them on the little mushroom shelves, and admire them until the bell rang.

I couldn’t bear to kick over my favorite forest fungi, so I put it off until the last day of elementary school, five years ago. As I knocked them all off their trees, I felt excited that the whole forest would be full of shelf-mushrooms one day.

I went back last week. The forest is much smaller now. There are no more fungal shelves.”

Caitlin Chan, Events Services Assistant at the Vancouver Public Library.