The Penetrable Shrump: What is a shrump?

To most people in the mushroom hunting community, a shrump is a bump in the duff or dirt with a mushroom under it, but the thing I find most intriguing about shrumps is that you just can't know what's in it until you look. It could be a stick, a pine cone, a turd, or even empty, perhaps occupied once by a mushroom that has melted away into the soil leaving only pushed up pine needles in its wake. Shrumps are easy to overlook if you don't know about them, but once you start searching you'll realize they're everywhere, sometimes filled with boletes and hidden treasure, but often disappointingly unoccupied. Like the event horizon of a black hole, a shrump is pure mystery. You know it's there, you can see its effect on the surrounding matter, but what's inside, you haven't the slightest. Luckily for us, unlike a black hole, the mystery of the shrump can be solved quite easily by opening it up and peering inside.

Some may argue that if the bump in question is not above a mushroom, then it never was a shrump at all, but I think a shrump is a shrump until proven otherwise. In fact, sometimes I like to stand outside the supposed shrump and imagine what is most likely to be inside, delaying gratification until my curiosity overcomes me, at which point I stick in a finger and peel back the leaves, the wave function of shrump possibilities collapses and resolves into a single entity, the truth, which is more often than not a gopher hole.

All metaphysical aspects aside, shrumps that do contain mushrooms are actually very common and easy to find. If you dare to penetrate them you may be rewarded with good visuals.

Here is a group of Zeller's Boletes (Boletus zelleri) that my mom had no idea were growing about five feet away from her driveway.

A common misconception that shouldn't deter you from poking shrumps is that mushroom toxins can soak through your skin and poison you. This is anti-fungal propaganda spread by uneducated people and worrisome mothers of small children. It's much more practical to worry about scorpions or gross rotten mushrooms being in the shrump, and that's why some people use a walking stick or similar probe to reveal what lies hidden. I like to use my hands personally, but if you want to remain unsoiled, it's up to you.

Another reason you might be deterred from picking mushrooms is that you are afraid to damage the organism. You need not worry because the mushroom is actually just the reproductive part of a larger organism, the mycelium, which lives beneath the ground. As long as you slice off the mushroom or pinch it above the base, you can be reasonably sure not to damage the mycelium. For identification purposes it may be necessary to take the base of the stalk, but if your picking morels or some other well known species for the table it's best to leave the stumps in the ground. It's not well known how hard on the mycelium it is to pick a mushroom, but the ones that have evolved to be delicious must find that having their fruits plucked is made up for by the superior spore dispersal afforded by hungry animals.

Check out the fuzzy purple mycelium at the base of this blewit (Clitocybe nuda)
Mushrooms and other fungi are important environmentally for a number of reasons. Not only are they a major decomposer of organic matter, but they also form symbiotic relationships with many different plants and trees. Lichens are symbiotic organisms that are made up of a fungus and an algae, and are one of the first lifeforms to colonize inhospitable places. Mushrooms can also be beautiful, edible, consciousness expanding, deadly poisonous, medicinal or destructive and they provide a great place for bugs to hang out.