Varun Vaid

How I Got Into This

It started in Lancaster during my PhD. My supervisor was really into mushroom hunting, and we'd take these long walks through the woods together. We'd pick mushrooms, talk about them, and also talk about whatever technical work we were doing. I got fascinated with it very quickly. Slowly I started going on my own, then with family, sometimes just with the dog.

Over time it became less about the walking and more about the picking and studying. I'd come home and do spore prints, try to study the structure of what I'd found. I bought a few mycology books thinking they'd have the answers, but I have to say, reading a proper mycology textbook is extremely difficult. It takes a lot more experience than I had, and I found it genuinely hard to understand.

So I went online. Joined a bunch of Facebook clubs, followed Instagram pages, got into the Reddit forums like r/mycology and the mushroom ID subreddits. I'd share pictures, try to learn from others. Sometimes I'd get a helpful response, sometimes nothing at all. That part made me impatient. You find something interesting in the field and you want to know what it is right now, not three days later when someone maybe replies.

Eventually, as I got more confident, I started to understand which mushrooms are clearly safe to eat and which ones need more work. That's when I became comfortable enough to actually eat things like giant puffballs and chicken of the woods. I feel pretty confident now in identifying what I can safely eat versus what I still need to study further, and I continue to learn.

I also noticed there wasn't a premium, well-designed mushroom ID app on the market. Everything felt either inaccurate or like it was built in 2012. That impatience with forums and frustration with existing apps is basically why I built Orangutany. But honestly, the intent is less about the app and more about helping people learn about the beauty of fungi. I want to learn along with them. That's kind of the whole story.

Since then I've foraged across Ontario: Algonquin, Bruce Peninsula, Muskoka, the Haliburton Highlands, and more local spots around the GTA that I'm not sharing here (foragers will understand). I've found honey mushrooms in a Markham subdivision, chicken of the woods on a dead oak in Scarborough, and a perfect parasol growing through a crack in a parking lot near Steeles Avenue. I've also foraged in Germany's Black Forest, the English Lake District, and the hills outside Seoul. Every place has its own species and its own culture around mushrooms.