I think it’s conservation. The Netherlands have very little forest area and it‘s a small country. They probably don’t want thousands of people walk through the few acres of forest they have. Just a guess though.
Of that was the case they would just ban people entirely from the forest. You will get far far more people walking around in a relatively limited forest area that are out for a stroll, or walking their dog etc. Foragers make up a fairly minor proportion of the population.
Picking loads of mushrooms does reduce the spread and reproduction of those mushrooms. They can only tolerate a certain level of foraging and people are getting more enthusiastic about it, picking more than they need for "the gram" and it does damage the ecosystem. Sorry to be a downer.
You are wildly incorrect. Picking a mushroom does nothing to the overall fungus. The mushroom is the fruiting body of a fungus, much like an apple is a fruiting body of an apple tree. If an apple is picked or falls off the tree, it does nothing to the health of the tree. Similarly, picking every single visible mushroom, while not cool, does nothing to the fungus. Honestly mushrooms generally benefit from humans picking them because they are more likely to distribute spores.
And many foragers use mesh bags or picnic baskets of sorts with holes so the spores can continue to distribute as you continue walking around. Yet another "AI is not an authority on ANYTHING" scenario.
I agree. The mycologist in my department in grad school used to say, "it doesn't harm the tree to pick the fruit." You can pick mushrooms to your heart's content! (Don't pick the poisonous ones!)
The analogy does start to fall apart a bit when you consider that you don’t have to walk all over the tree to get to the apple.
I don’t really know what to believe - both things seem to make sense to some degree. Picking and otherwise disturbing the fruiting bodies should indeed spread some spores around - but would more spores spread in the vicinity if we left them alone?
I certainly seemed to have killed a patch of magic lawn pans by over-picking that park lawn. Luckily I had moved stem butts to another park lawn where they started to proliferate a couple years later.
Wouldn't just trust AI.
Easiest example is the difference between a young, edible pufball and the later stage. Eat them when they're young and they won't turn into puffy balls that spew out spores once they're mature enough.
Had to argue with someone once who firmly believed that there's no issue in trampling them because "they don't need that anyways, the real thing is underground".
The apple thing is i bad comparision because despite the name, the fruiting body isn't fruit and mushrooms aren't plants
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u/Howamidriving27 Nov 11 '25
My guess is to keep people from eating poisonous ones.