Millions of Russians and Ukrainians, rural and urban, spend free mornings from July to September stepping softly through damp woods, their eyes scanning for white, yellow, red and tan caps poking up beneath ferns and pine needles. Grandparents teach grandchildren to delight in the challenge of the hunt. The composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky used to jot down melodies during solitary mushroom-gathering expeditions in his hometown of Klin north of Moscow. Author Leo Tolstoy wrote joyously of the pastime. Safonov says most mushroom poisonings are caused by overconfidence, and recommends people seek a second opinion on whether their mushrooms are safe.
Officials often blame poverty for the recent increase in mushroom deaths.
As economies have shriveled in the decade since the Soviet Union's collapse, many Russians and Ukrainians rely more and more on homegrown or hand-picked food for sustenance. Also, many rural residents collect mushrooms then sell them in big city markets. The financial incentive is enough to make the vendors include a few risky ones in their stock. Others fault pollution, saying safe mushroom species can become dangerous if they grow on contaminated soil. Russia's Surgeon General Gennady Onishchenko said recently that a local variety of the blednaya poganka, or death cap, had mutated to look like ordinary champignons.