(soothing music) - This is a dyer's polypore.

They use it for dying wool.

This is an agarikon.

I've been watching it since it was a baby.

I think it's about five years old now.

This is the meat.

The color of this is identifying characteristic.

Yeah, I'm not sure what that is.

(soothing music) Yeah, I have no idea what that is.

(laughter) (soothing music) There's too many of 'em.

I've been into mushrooms five or six years, probably, After I retired, I was still healthy enough to get out into the woods.

One thing led to another, and now I love it.

(soothing music) The citizen scientist idea is just kind of a new idea that, see what people can add to science, because scientists just don't have the time to spend out in the woods, and collecting all of these, citizen scientists do.

This is more unusual dew, the green colored.

Try to get as much of the stem as you can.

- [Man] Ooh, no gills.

No gills, right.

We talked a little bit about the Lion's Mane, now they're looking at as enhancing their memory for people with dementia.

Maybe there's something there that we can, not so much use the mushroom for, but learn what is in that mushroom that enhances people's memory, and maybe be able to do something commercial about it.

(mumbles) Yeah, then don't.

(soothing music) Everything is changing.

Now that we have DNA and getting complete different perspective of where they fall as how they're related to each other.

These trees that you're looking around, there's a relationship with a fungi, sometimes several fungi, and now they're even finding that the nutrients of a big tree can actually pass through into a smaller tree, through the conduit of a fungi.

(soothing music)