Editor’s note: Many mushrooms found in the wild are poisonous. Mushrooms should never be foraged for, eaten or grown unless they have been identified as a safe, edible variety.

Cole Hillis loves his fungus. Especially the kind you can eat.

He had a background in ecology and environmental sciences, but he didn’t find himself getting immersed in the fungi kingdom and mushroom cultivation until about two years ago, when the 26-year-old Brunswick resident became captivated by mushrooms’ often mysterious, beneficial health properties, their fascinating life cycles and their interaction with their environment.

“There’s like 14,000 species of mushrooms currently described, and maybe over 10 million possible species of fungi that are still to be discovered,” Hillis said. “And it’s so great just to grow them. Harvest is actually my least favorite part. I just love growing them, watching them grow, working with them, growing a relationship with each species and getting a better feel for what they want, what their environment needs to set them up for success.”

With that kind of enthusiasm, it’s no surprise Hillis loves sharing his mycological knowledge with others. And that’s just what he did in a two-part adult education class in Lewiston recently.

His “Spore to Table: Home Mushroom Cultivation Basics” course gave local learners a “one-up” on the basics of mushroom growing, including the spore (think seeds, but not quite the same), mycelium (think roots, that produce the mushroom), mushroom life cycle, how edible fungi grow and spread naturally, and how they can be grown in a lab, at home and outdoors.

“Nobody’s really paid (mushrooms) any attention until the last couple years, really and they’re pretty crucial,” Hillis said. “Whether it’s the fruiting bodies that we can forage, that we can eat and are of great health benefits (or) even those that are being turned into what’s called micro materials — you can make leathers, you can make bricks for houses, you can do insulation, you can do paper, you can make furniture — whatever it is, anything in the world, you can basically do it with mushrooms and fungi.”

Out of the gate in his first class, Hillis displayed a cluster of reishi mushrooms that he grew from a culture he purchased at North Spore, a business in Portland. Hillis patronizes the business as well as Maine Cap ‘N Stem in Gardiner, but he also makes his own cultures propagated from his own lab-grown fungal colonies or from the outdoors. Sound daunting? Hillis said it’s not, if you take it step by step or you skip making your own culture and purchase a grow-ready bag.

“All mushrooms are fungi, but not all fungi are mushrooms if that makes sense,” Hillis said. “Mushrooms are simply fungi fruiting bodies, but not all fungi produce those fruiting bodies. We’re going to talk about the ones that do and how you can do it right at home.”

Hillis said reishi is a resilient species that is a good choice for beginners to cultivate. The mushrooms fully fruit and take their distinctive antler shape in three to four months and the white tips can be eaten by sautéing them. They crisp up very well and take on a bacon-like flavor, he said.

“Overall, Reishi is a pretty woody mushroom, so the white tips on that is about all you’re going to eat. But if you were to dry all of it and grind it up, you could put it into a tea or a tincture. It’s known in traditional Chinese medicine as the ‘mushroom of immortality,’ so it’s just got a bunch of different health benefits that science is kind of catching up to by the day, by the week.”

Reishi mushrooms are phototropic to boot, Hillis said, which means they grow toward light sources, allowing for artistic cultivation techniques.

“They can grow in total darkness, but you can get sort of an art form going,” Hillis said ,adding that the growing experience for him is often as fulfilling as harvesting and consuming the fruits.

GETTING DOWN IN THE DIRT

Hillis talked about the methods of culturing the mycelium or “roots” of the mushroom and the different grains that can be used as growing material to start raising fungi from mycelium cultures. He said mycelium is “omnipotent,” meaning that a small piece can be used to clone and propagate the entire fungus. It can be done repeatedly, he said.

Hillis was able to clone what he thought were coral tooth mushrooms, which he found on a trail near his home. After two bouts of cloning, Hillis said he was able to give the fungi the proper growing environment and was surprised to learn he’d actually cloned bear’s head mushrooms.

“This is like a one-mile-loop trail that takes 15 minutes to walk with my dog, and I’ve found just about every culture and mushroom I’ve wanted to see out in the wild,” Hillis said laughing. “But I’m not as good a forager.”

Reishi mushrooms, along with several other species, might be a good launching point for beginners, though they take more time than some species to fully mature, about four months all told. Oyster species take significantly less time to mature — just about three weeks, he said. Coral tooth takes just under a month and bear’s head just under two months to mature.

Methods for propagating different species of mycelium are similar, if not the same, so growing other types of mushrooms like pink or blue oysters, wine caps or lion’s mane only differ in their preferred environments for growing.

While most mushroom cultivation is simply a waiting game, there are a few steps to take after obtaining a culture in order to grow your own, Hillis said. The culture needs to be able to spread in a nutrient substance like grains or brans or even food-grade popping corn, and it’s all done in a sterile sealed bag that keeps contaminants out. Likewise, those nutrient substances must be pasteurized, if not outright sterilized, first. The liquid culture can be introduced through the bag by injection, usually through a self-healing port.

Once the grains or similar substances look like they’ve been completely taken over by fungi, you work the bags with your hands to break and mix up the substances. Then you let the bag sit for a couple days while the fungi takes over what’s left.

The fungal-rich substance is then introduced to a bag of substrates — usually a blend of substances like pasteurized or sterilized wood chips, sawdust or straw — in amounts anywhere from a teaspoon to a handful, and then sealed.

When the bag of substrate appears white all over, it’s time to put a slit on any side of the bag just above the growth. Then, you wait.

If any of that sounds difficult for a beginner, that’s because it can be a lot to navigate, Hillis said, though it’s clear he feels like it’s all worth it.

He offered some tips to class participants, including:

— The process should be done in a room with little to no air movement as to not contaminate any of the materials during any of the steps. Luckily, that can usually be done anywhere in the home with enough care.

— The growing environment will vary by species, some liking more light than others, but they should never be grown in direct sunlight.

— Lots of beginners are encouraged to start off by buying an “inoculated” bag of substrate, which can be purchased at any of Maine’s businesses catering to mushroom growers or farmers.

After that, Hillis said, there isn’t a whole lot that’s off limits for the growing process.

“You can take a pair of denim jeans, boil them like a faux pasteurization, and you can sprinkle some grain spawn into, say, your pockets, fold it up . . . and you can grow oysters on your jeans,” Hillis said. “You can grow them on books, whatever it may be. You’ve just got to take those initial steps to set your mycelium up for success.”

As the class ended last Wednesday and students picked out their own nearly-ready-to-slit bag of blue oyster substrates, Hillis reminded the class that mushrooms are more than just a cultivation project — fungi are a living, breathing artform, he said, motioning to his package of maturing reishis at the front of the class.