The story
Mushroom lovers and mushroom avoiders
In their 1957 book Mushrooms, Russia and History, Valentina and Gordon Wasson split the world into mycophiles, peoples who love wild mushrooms, and mycophobes, who distrust them. Russians and Catalans sat firmly in the first camp; the English-speaking world, they argued, belonged in the second.
That divide still shapes who buys a mushroom knife. In regions where families forage every autumn, a Pakistan folding knife with a curved blade, a brass bolster and a lanyard is a familiar tool, passed from hand to hand in the woods. Elsewhere, the growing interest in foraging courses is turning it into a new discovery, and the warm brown acacia of this one suits both kinds of buyer.
