Kathy Yerich shares how we created a mushroom-themed tree for the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum’s Winter Lights display.
Magical Mycological?
Mycelium Illumination?
Toadstool Tannenbaum?
The titles above may sound like a fungal version of a Hallmark made-for-TV holiday special, but they were names under consideration when the MN Landscape Arboretum invited the Minnesota Mycological Society to participate in their Winter Lights display.
For those of us who celebrate Christmas and decorate a tree, we may choose ornaments that reveal our hobbies, places we’ve visited, or even our history – maybe with handmade items passed down for generations.
Decorating an Arboretum Christmas Tree
For the debut at the Indoor Forest display at Winter Lights, we decided to focus on a theme of mushroom education. After all, this is a key mission of the club. So, we transformed Mushroom Identification cards from The New York Botanical Garden series into ornaments. The deck’s historical images beautifully embellished the 6-foot artificial tree. Then we added carefully collected and preserved specimens in individual jars. We used copies of spore prints to create paper ornaments. To complete the look, we commissioned custom ornaments using the design that the talented Karen Milnes created for the club’s milestone 125th anniversary celebration last year.
Trees of Christmases Past
It still fills us with pride to tout that our club was founded in 1899 by Dr. Mary Whetstone. Learn more about her, the history of MMS, and the birth of mycological societies in general – largely in response to poisonings and the need for mycological education – through the research and presentations by Heather Erickson on the MMS website.
So, what would Mary and the early club members have used to adorn their holiday trees?
In Victorian times, trees might have been decorated with delicate, blown glass ornaments from Germany, but also with dried fruit, paper cutouts and chains, but also pinecones, and other natural foraged items.
Along with four-leaf clovers, horseshoes, and pigs, Amanita muscaria mushrooms were often depicted on Victorian postcards, wishing the recipient good luck in the New Year. See the beautiful antique postcard images, as collected and digitized by the New York Public Library, in an article by Carrie McBride.
Her article briefly mentions the Santa Amanita folklore, connecting our Christmas traditions more deeply with the Amanita muscaria mushroom as used by shamans in arctic regions for winter solstice ceremonies. Giuliana Furci dives deeper into the ethnomycology in her article for the Fungi Foundation. It is titled: The Influence of Hallucinogenic Mushrooms on Christmas.
Our Second Arboretum Display
It’s not surprising that the more we examine mushrooms, the more we learn about their powerful connections with other kingdoms across the entire planet. Last year, the MN Landscape Arboretum Spring Flower Show proudly featured mushrooms for the first time in its display! They are just as lovely as flowers and warrant recognition as part of the story of growth and of resilience for so many of the plants we admire.
So, whatever the season, whatever holidays you celebrate, don’t forget the fungi. And let the spirit of learning, community, and connections inspire and embrace you!