Fungadelphia, a festival for mushroom lovers, sprouts in Philadelphia for second year

Something funky is growing in Northwest Philadelphia.

Deep in the woodlands between the Wissahickon Creek and the Schuylkill, about 300 mushroom lovers converged Saturday for the second annual Fungadelphia Festival — a celebration of all things mycological.

Backed by tunes from Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles, Steely Dan, and other heady favorites, this outdoorsy crowd had plenty to explore in the lush environs behind the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, where an array of mushroom vendors, artisans, and musicians gathered.

Of course, there were plenty of mycological experts ready to talk shrooms.

“Everyone knows what a mushroom is, but actually it’s part of a larger organism,” said Daehan Bong, a 33-year-old member of the Philadelphia Mycology Club.

Near the forest’s edge, Bong had set up a table with a large trifold poster board bursting with facts to educate passersby about his favorite fungi.

“The mushroom, its only purpose is to make spores,” he continued. “The larger organism is the mycelium — it’s entirely underground.”

Near a vendor serving up vegan mushroom delicacies, Fungadelphia’s organizer, 28-year-old Sam Bucciarelli, welcomed visitors back for the second edition of the budding event.

“The weather is much better this year,” Bucciarelli said with a grin.

The Philadelphia resident wore a large, red, gnome-style hat with leafy greens twirled around the brim; for guests with questions about mushrooms, she was impossible to miss.

“Mushrooms are a pretty underserved science,” said Bucciarelli when asked what inspired her to throw the festival alongside a team of around 20 volunteers. “A lot of the data that scientists are using comes from community science.”

For Bucciarelli, community is key, which is why the New Jersey native founded the Philadelphia Mycology Club. The nonprofit, which hosted the festival, operates in environmental centers, libraries, and museums across the region.

The club teaches members of the public about “all the aspects of mushrooms,” Bucciarelli said, from lessons on how to forage and cook them to more science-based lectures.

For visitors with a focus on flavor, vendor Val Ray King was busy selling mushrooms spanning the varieties from shiitake to blue oyster. For those looking for another experience, well, no psychedelics were on hand.

A member of the urban mushroom farming group Mycopolitan, Ray King grows mushrooms in an unlikely location — under artificial lighting in a basement in Northeast Philadelphia.

“Most of them were harvested yesterday,” Ray King said. “They’ve literally been touched by one person.”

Within the mushroom world, nothing has captured more attention as of late than the Cordyceps, Ray King said. The parasitic fungus was made popular by HBO’s The Last of Us, in which a mutated Cordyceps variant begins infecting humans.

According to Ray King, however, the fungus is misunderstood.

“They also have huge medical benefits to them,” Ray King said, mentioning their uses for energy and respiratory health. “I don’t have them here — they’re all sold. I can’t grow them fast enough.”

All this fungi talk was relatively new for Vedant Patel, a 25-year-old festival attendee who said he got into mushrooms only recently after watching the Fantastic Fungi documentary on a streaming platform.

“I was intrigued by mushrooms from that,” said Patel, a self-described science lover from Delaware. “The top of the mushroom is just the fruit of it. Then underneath they have a much more complex network, kind of like neurons in your brain.”

Patel is the kind of visitor Bucciarelli, Fungadelphia’s organizer, hopes will come back year after year to enjoy attractions such as group yoga classes, arts and crafts, guided nature walks, and live music. (Nematode, a psychedelic rock band from New Jersey, provided the jams this year.)

“If there’s a tie into mushrooms, or nature, or connecting with community, we do our best to welcome in everyone who wants to be here,” Bucciarelli said.