For those who love mushrooms, but are not up to long walks through tick-laden woods, there is still hope. Legally harvested wild mushrooms can be sold by certified vendors in Iowa. They can sometimes be found at early Farmers’ Markets, local stores, and sometimes online.

But if you don’t know your fungi, purchasing mushrooms can be a concern. Potential vendors have been studying already to gain state certification as wild-harvested mushroom sellers.

Chelsea Harbach, Ph.D., director of diagnostics at Iowa State University’s Plant and Insect Diagnostic Clinic, has been leading the classes this spring.

“We cover food safety, being smart about where you are harvesting, how you are transporting, and verification of choice edibles that are legal to sell in Iowa,” she said.

Three different species of morel mushrooms are legal to sell in Iowa, as well as seven other types of mushrooms and multiple different species, inducing four different species of oyster mushrooms.

Harbach said the first step for buyers is to determine if the mushrooms they are purchasing are farm-grown or wild harvested.

“If they are buying mushrooms from a vendor that is cultivating mushrooms, they will have gone through the hoops to legally sell their cultivated mushrooms, and that’s a whole other process,” she explained.

Vendors that sell wild-harvested mushrooms should display a certificate that they are trained to legally sell such fungi.

“Anyone selling wild-harvested mushrooms should have on display a couple of things,” Harbach said. “One would be a Consumer Advisory statement, which is required to be displayed with the sale of any wild-harvested mushrooms.”

That statement will explain such things as safe cooking processes for consumption, as well as possible allergies.

Any certified vendor should be able to explain the different species. Proper cooking is very important, she added.

“Cooking increases the digestibility of mushrooms,” Harbach said. “Mushrooms, inherently, are made of molecules that are pretty tough anyway, so cooking does two things; it helps break some of that down so it is more digestible; also, if there are any microbes on the mushrooms that could cause food-borne illness, it would help limit the likelihood of those microbes surviving the cooking process.”

She noted that it is not legal to sell mushrooms harvested on public lands in Iowa. In addition, as with any hunting season, no one should hunt on private land without first gaining permission from the land owner.