Everything Green Is a Vegetable, Everything That Moves Is Meat: Food and Biodiversity

III. Matsutake – Eaten to the Brink of Extinction

Li Ruijun has in fact been researching the culture of wild mushrooms in Yunnan for some time and has written articles about them for Foodthink, The Paper and other outlets. Could he help us understand the story behind the wild-mushroom boom?

Li Ruijun: As far as I can tell, a rather obvious watershed in the rise of wild greens and wild mushrooms was 2020. Because of the pandemic, people’s attitudes were quite contradictory. On the one hand, some felt that eating wild food posed a risk. On the other, many people who had been cooped up in the city for ages threw themselves into nature in search of relaxation, paying far more attention to their health and wanting to eat things they perceived as natural and wholesome.

What struck me most vividly was what I saw on the mountains in Yunnan in July 2020. You could barely take a single step without spotting a piece of litter, and another step or two brought you up against yet more people. That year, enormous numbers of people flooded into the forests and hillsides, foraging for mushrooms and wild greens in particular. What was rather frantic was that they would pick whatever they saw, without any corresponding knowledge – they simply assumed that anything from the wild, anything natural, must be good. Previously, in the city, the wild greens and mushrooms they ate had mostly been bought from markets, where safety oversight had effectively stripped away much of the risk of consumption. But when you are foraging in the wild yourself and lack the necessary knowledge, the risk is very high. So that year, the number of cases of poisoning from wild greens and mushrooms in Yunnan skyrocketed, and several made it into the trending lists.

Now, back to matsutake being eaten to the brink of extinction. This has a great deal to do with the nature of the mushroom itself. Its growth cycle is very long – the mycelium may have to grow beneath the soil for seven, eight years or even longer before it pushes through the surface and matures. But a very powerful supply chain has now formed around matsutake, and demand is genuinely voracious. The pace at which they are being consumed may simply outstrip the pace at which they can grow. Once the forest slopes are contracted out section by section, the entire yield is effectively booked up before the season even begins. On top of that, in recent years the climate has changed, and Yunnan has grown progressively drier, with less and less rainfall, so fewer and fewer mushrooms are coming up. This year the mushroom season started roughly two weeks later than usual, and the quantities have been exceptionally small. And so matsutake grows ever scarcer, ever harder to obtain, and ever more precious.

Li Ruijun: There is a legend that matsutake was the only species capable of growing in the nuclear blast zone after the atomic bombings of Japan, though to this day that claim has never been substantiated – it has simply become an urban legend. Then, in a commercial context, ever more mysterious properties were added to its mystique. Some people say that eating it can fight cancer, and a handful of nutritional studies have been cited as evidence, claiming that matsutake alcohol has an effect on cancer cells. But we all know that even if a substance has an effect, you have to consider dosage, course of treatment and so on before it means anything. After commercial packaging, though, it simply became: eat matsutake and cure cancer. Even funnier is the fact that matsutake alcohol is concentrated in the thin membrane under the cap, so the advice became: no matter how you prepare it, don’t damage that layer. This in turn cemented the phenomenon whereby an uncapped matsutake is worth more than one whose cap has opened.

So matsutake grew ever more shrouded in mystery. One thread is the urban legend, which turned it into a kind of myth; the second is dwindling supply, which made it ever scarcer. Layer on top of all that commercial packaging, and matsutake has become something almost supernatural.

The same pattern applies to other things too. Take the truffle, for instance – it is, in essence, a traditional edible fungus. But because truffles carry a distinctive, exotic fragrance not unlike the pheromone smell of a rutting boar, people have this rather simple folk notion that eating something bestows its virtues upon you. It is not just Chinese people who think that way – people abroad do too. So the claim went: eat this, and you will radiate charm. Once this idea made its way to China and was dressed up in commercial packaging, it quickly dovetailed with traditional Chinese notions of health and nourishment, and it became: eating truffles is good for women, and good for men too. In truth, when we used to eat truffles, none of this rhetoric existed.

Ban Xia: Besides matsutake, truffles are becoming harder and harder for us to get hold of as well – they are almost being dug to extinction. In Italy and France, truffle harvesting is regulated by law: harvesters must rely on dogs or pigs to sniff the truffles out before they can be collected. Those who go out specifically to find truffles are called truffle hunters. In China, truffle dogs have been introduced in Chuxiong, one of our mushroom-producing areas, but simply no one is willing to do it that way. I have watched videos of truffle harvesting where every scrap of earth has been turned over, dug at least half a metre deep. The truffles being dug up keep getting smaller and smaller – cut open, they are white, at best grey, never that deep, mature black.

IV. Foraging Wild Greens: Steeped in Tradition

Tian Le: Looking at the stories of matsutake and truffle, harvesting wild plants under market pressures can easily spiral into something “frantic”. I’d like to ask Sun Shan, who lives in Canada: what is the situation abroad? Are there specific principles for foraging wild greens?

Sun Shan is a co-founder of the Shan Shui Conservation Center and currently serves as its chair. She began farming in 2015, exploring the land, agriculture, food, ecology, and a self-sufficient way of life. She now lives in Ottawa, Canada, where she runs the Chi Garden Ecological Farm and Fermentation Kitchen. She has previously hosted a natural herbal ointment workshop at Foodthink and has shared her food-and-farming philosophy and practice – rooted in ecology – on several occasions.

Sun Shan: The tradition of foraging wild greens and mushrooms exists not only in China but all over the world. Because of my background in ecology, combined with my own work in small-scale agriculture and nature education, I have taken a keen interest in the foraging traditions of different regions.

The first tradition that shaped me is, of course, the one I grew up with as a northerner from Northeast China. From a young age, I came into contact with all sorts of wild greens. And since I studied ecology, my academic and professional life has also given me a solid grounding in botany.

The second tradition that shaped me comes from North America’s Indigenous peoples. Before Europeans arrived in the Americas – before natural landscapes were transformed into today’s industrial agriculture and urban sprawl – these communities, like other peoples around the world, had already accumulated a wealth of local traditional knowledge. This encompassed not only wild greens and mushrooms for food, but also medicinal knowledge, knowledge of ecosystems, and far more. During the process of colonisation, much of this rich Indigenous knowledge was not passed on. Instead, it became scarce knowledge – something that, beyond Indigenous communities themselves, most people no longer know.

Sun Shan: The third tradition I have learned from comes from European settlers. What they brought with them was largely the European system of botany, along with the herbal medicine tradition. For instance, the Peterson Field Guides series includes a volume called Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, which describes several hundred edible and medicinal plants found in eastern and central North America. There are many similar reference books in North America, most of them written by European herbalists and botanists, though increasing numbers are now incorporating Indigenous food systems and harvesting methods.

Sun Shan: Beyond reference books, there are numerous wild-harvesting groups. Here in Ottawa, for example, there is a group called Foragers of Ottawa, whose members come from various cultural backgrounds and regularly ask one another questions in the group chat – how to pick a particular wild green, whether it can be picked at all, and so on. What these books and communities emphasise above all are two points: first, safety – how to distinguish edible plants from look-alike species that are actually toxic; and second, sustainability – how to harvest in moderation without harming the ecosystem.

Sun Shan: The herbalist Nicole Tek has developed a set of foraging ethics based on levels of impact. At the lowest level are species that are abundant and widespread – garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), for example, is an invasive species; it will grow even through the worst storms, and no matter how much you pick, you need never worry about driving it to extinction. At the highest level are species that are extremely endangered and highly vulnerable. For these, we should all be protective – however tempting they may be to eat, they must absolutely never be harvested. This includes the slow-growing native perennial species in forests. Much of this foraging ethic draws on teachings followed by Indigenous peoples, who have forged a sustainable relationship of coexistence with natural ecosystems.

Sun Shan: It is simply impossible to forage for wild greens without viewing nature through an ecosystem lens. Our ecosystems are, after all, profoundly diverse. The British writer Richard Mabey records a charming detail in his book Weeds: In Defence of Nature’s Most Unloved. The botanist Salisbury went out for a walk in the wilds and, upon returning home, raised over twenty species – three hundred plants in total – from the scraps he collected from the turned-up hem of his trousers. And this rich ecosystem is shared – it sustains not only humans but also insects and countless other creatures. So whenever we talk about wild greens, we must never forget this ecosystem perspective.

V. What Is It Like to Grow Wild Greens in the City?

Tian Le: As our conversation has unfolded, we have come to realise that wild greens are a subject that deserves to be taken seriously. Next, let me introduce Tan Lingdi, who works at the Shan Shui Conservation Center.\n\nThere is a little story behind inviting her today. Once, she came to a meeting at Foodthink carrying a bag of fat-hen (Chenopodium album) she had just foraged. She picked over the greens throughout the meeting, and when it ended, served everyone a plate of dressed wild salad – and instantly became a legend. She has also been a guest at Foodthink’s book club. So, Ms Tan, as a professional working in urban biodiversity conservation, how do you view this subject?\n\n Tan Lingdi: The urban green spaces we often see present themselves as near-monoculture environments, because uniformity is thought to look more attractive – yet this can trigger all sorts of problems. For instance, people are deprived of a richly diverse experience: on a monoculture lawn, if you crouch down and look closely, you will find far fewer species of wildflowers. And compared with lawns that contain weeds, monoculture lawns are far more susceptible to disease, which means more pesticides have to be sprayed. Moreover, a near-monoculture environment may also leave insects, birds and other creatures short of food.\n\nTo restore urban biodiversity, we need to push for changes in the standards governing the upkeep and management of urban green spaces. The old standards, for example, stipulated that no weeds were to be found on a lawn; we want to advocate for policies that allow a certain degree of weed growth. We also proactively plant some “weeds”, including plants that provide food and nectar for pollinating insects such as bees.\n\nOne study has pointed out that cities are actually a refuge for pollinating insects. In heavily human-influenced landscapes, the countryside can be a less hospitable environment for pollinators, because more pesticides tend to be used there. So planting food and nectar sources specifically for pollinating insects in the city can be of real help to them. Work along the lines of “rewilding urban green spaces”, I think, may offer city dwellers more opportunities to encounter wild greens, insects and all the rest.\n\n

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Tan Lingdi: Restoring urban biodiversity requires us to plant a great many native species. One of the harder parts is collecting their seeds, because apart from plants with commercial or medicinal value – rehmannia (Rehmannia glutinosa), Chinese patchouli and the like – seeds of most other plants are very difficult to purchase. You simply have to gather them yourself.\n\nWhen we set out to grow these native plants, we first trial them in the back garden of our office at Peking University to see whether they can thrive. During the trial period, we need to pull out competing weeds at the right time – fat-hen in particular grows very fast and is fiercely competitive. Once they are uprooted, with the mindset that it would be a waste not to eat them, I sometimes cook up a few fat-hen myself; blanched, they taste wonderful. So that was how the fat-hen ended up at the Foodthink meeting.\n\nIt is worth noting, though, that fat-hen contains porphyrins, so after eating it you should avoid prolonged sun exposure, as this can readily trigger a phototoxic inflammatory reaction.\n

VI. Wild Greens: A Gift from Every Local Ecosystem

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Tian Le: So for some wild greens and wild mushrooms, it may not necessarily be a bad thing if scientists find ways to cultivate and domesticate them. Sun Shan has a background in botany – why can some species be domesticated while others never have been? What is the difference?\n\n Sun Shan: Humans are aware of more than 15,000 edible plant species, yet the plants we actually cultivate amount to less than one-tenth of that – at most a little over a thousand. Fewer than 150 species are relied upon as food, and 90 per cent of what humans eat comes from just twenty species. So between those 15,000 edible species and the roughly 100-plus that are grown, the vast majority remain undomesticated. Our staple grains are even more concentrated: wheat, rice, maize and barley together account for three-quarters of the entire cereal market.\n\n There are many wild, perennial cereals that have never been domesticated. Why haven’t they been? There could be all sorts of reasons. Take the trout lily (Erythronium), for example – it is quite common in Japan, China and North America. At its base it has a small, starch-rich bulb; in Japan it goes by the name katakuriko – a word that simply means “starch”. In early times, the roots and rhizomes of many wild plants were the original source of starch. One reason the trout lily was never domesticated is probably that its yield is extremely small. Once you have found a substitute source of starch, you no longer need to depend on plants that produce so little and are so difficult to domesticate. In the course of human development, only those plants that could sustain a growing population and offer a predictable yield were ever domesticated.\n\n

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Sun Shan: There is also the situation where a species you assume has never been domesticated actually has been – only the domestication was localised, or was established and then lost. Take the tomato, for instance: the Aztecs of the Americas had long ago domesticated it, but when colonists carried it back to Europe, they brought none of the Indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge with them, and it took more than a century before it was developed anew.\n\nThe wild species mentioned earlier – zhuye cai, matsutake and truffles – are in fact inextricably bound up with their ecosystems. Their roots, the mycelial networks in the soil, their sources of nutrition, their entire life history and cycles – all are woven into the ecology around them. Even if scientists can work out the science behind it, they may not necessarily be able to replicate that environment. Nor do I think every plant should be domesticated by us. These wild greens and fungi should be regarded as a gift from each place’s ecosystem to us. This wild gift is inherently symbiotic with other species, and within that symbiotic, sustainable relationship, we humans are merely one member among many.\n\n

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This article first appeared on Tencent News in the programme Yilai Lai Lao Ke (Let’s Talk Science)

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Republished on Foodthink’s official account with permission

\n Compiled by: Mu Ye\n\n Edited by: Tian Le\n\n