Alan Rockefeller became enamored with mushrooms one fateful Christmas Day while out hiking with friends, which led him to eventually leave his work as a computer hacker to pursue mycology full-time.
Twenty years later, Alan is a renowned mycologist, public speaker, biohacker, and photographer who lives in Oakland, California. He travels to various countries to collect and study mushrooms and has photographed more than 1,000 species of fungi from Mexico and 1,000 species from California. Using phylogenetic and microscopic analysis, he has identified several species not described in the scientific literature.
Vivian Kanchian:
I’ll start off by asking: what is the question you get asked the most?
Alan Rockefeller:
The question I get asked the most is, what’s my favorite mushroom?
VK:
Okay… I could’ve guessed that.
I was recently at a Breakfast with the Beatles event, and this same DJ has been hosting these events for decades now. So, we asked him what question he gets asked the most, and he said people always ask him what his favorite Beatles song is. He suggested a great way to freshen up that question, which is to ask: “What’s your favorite Beatles song now”?
So, do you have a favorite mushroom? Could you even pick one? And does it change over time?
AR:
No, I don’t have a favorite mushroom. I tend to say whichever mushroom is in front of me, which is pretty accurate. Because I like to do a lot of hiking, and I’ll find a mushroom, maybe get really interested in it, get the best picture I can, and then save dried samples. And so, yeah, my favorite mushroom changes by the minute.
VK:
Cool. Before your work as a mycologist, I know that you were working in computers.
Can you share a little bit about what that transition was like – from computers to mushrooms?
AR:
Before I got into mushrooms, I was doing computer security. So it was a lot of computer hacking and breaking into computers. And so while it was in corporate environments, it was not a particularly corporate job. I was doing things that people typically do for fun, you know, illegally, and just kept doing the same thing but for pay. It was often in cubicle-land, but the work itself was decidedly not cubicle-like.
That was fun, and it sort of relates to what I’m doing now – in that I like to combine computer stuff with nature, which can give you a really interesting perspective on nature. To do that, I use high-end photography and DNA sequencing. Both of those things require advanced computer skills.
VK:
It’s such a cool and interesting career transition – very intriguing!
I think it was in an interview with Hamilton Morris that you said you had gone mushroom hunting one fateful Christmas day 20 years ago that started you on this journey. Have you always had an affinity for nature?
AR:
Yeah, I’ve been hiking with my parents since a very young age, and I never really dug that deeply into it. But I always dig really deeply into something. So, it’s not surprising that nature caught my attention. The more I learn about it, the more interesting it gets. It also seems like nature is a good thing to spend time on if you’re gonna spend a bunch of time figuring something out. There’s an infinite number of things to see in nature, and it’s a cool thing to look at.
So yeah, I used to do a lot of hiking, and I never really felt like I was making really good use of my time hiking. It was kinda like, well, “I’m getting a little bit of exercise, and it’s pretty out here, but what am I doing with my life”? And then, when I started to get into mushrooms a little bit more… all of a sudden… I began to feel I was making really good use of my time when I was out hiking because I was pursuing my interests and accomplishing my goals. So, that made it even nicer to be outside.
About 2010, I was working for the government breaking into their computers and decided that just working on computers wasn’t really that fulfilling, and I wanted to see if I could make a living being a mycologist. So, I quit my job and started mushroom hunting full-time. And I was kind of splitting my time between Mexico and the United States… just used a lot of my savings just trying to get good at it and spending as much time in the woods as I could. Eventually, I was able to make it pay the bills. That took a lot of years, but one way that I did it was just to try to be as helpful as I could on social media, so that way if people needed to hire a mycologist, they would know somebody that they could hire. And that ended up working out well.
VK:
That’s super-inspiring. I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing, because we need more of you… people who geek out on taxonomy!
VK:
So, you said you were really putting yourself out there and stuff in the beginning. And I think among mushroom lovers there is this inclination to have a very open science approach. Why do you think mushroom people are so open to share?
AR:
Well, mushrooms are really complicated. There’s so many of them, and so it kind of takes many thousands of people working together to figure them all out. So it makes sense that people work together on the Internet, because one person couldn’t hope to see even a tiny percent of it on their own.
VK:
Simple and logical explanation.
Regarding your work in the rainforests of Mexico and Ecuador, I believe… is that right?
AR:
Yeah, I pretty much go wherever it rains, or wherever mushroom events are. But yeah, usually I’ll spend at least some time in Mexico and sometime in Ecuador, and the rest in the United States.
VK:
So, for those people who haven’t heard of this before, because I certainly hadn’t… what constitutes a mega diverse country, of which there are only 17 on earth?
AR:
One thing I notice is that there’s really good plant diversity – just a huge diversity of plants. And that usually comes from a diversity of soil types. And when you have diversity of plants, you get diversity of fungi. I noticed that diversity kind of congregates together in areas. You’ll see some areas where it’s not too diverse, and you’ll see the same thing over and over and over and over, no matter how far you walk. And then there’ll be like a little patch, where you’ll see like 50 different species you hadn’t seen all day. And then you keep walking, and you’ll see the same couple of boring things for a long time, then there’ll be another really diverse patch. It’s not always obvious why one spot has all this diversity, but there are clearly unseen factors that influence it.
The shade definitely helps, as do the trees. But when you get to these spots that have a whole lot of different mushrooms in one area, there’s not usually anything that really stands out about it. But yeah, it’s definitely moist enough to support that, and the trees are big enough to support that. But sometimes you think, “Well, why here and not the 20 other places that look to my eye just like it”?
VK:
They always keep you guessing.
AR:
Yeah, all these fungal-plant interactions are way more complicated than humans could possibly understand.
VK:
I heard you’re getting ready to lead an expedition tour in March, right?
AR:
Yeah, we will be in Ecuador March 27- April 2, and we’re just inviting the whole Internet to come mushroom hunting in Ecuador. We did the exact same thing last year. and 17 people showed up. It was actually perfect because we rented out the whole eco resort that my friend runs, and that was the capacity of the resort.
VK:
Amazing. So, you are traveling to the unprotected rainforests of Ecuador. And can you? Can you explain what exactly that means and what keeps it from being protected?
AR:
Well, it’s a relatively small area in Ecuador, but much larger than someone could walk. And the exact foray is on private property. So, it’s not protected by the government. But there’s certainly no logging happening, but there is logging happening nearby. And the forests of Ecuador are also threatened quite a bit by petroleum extraction. There’s some battles over the rights to mine petroleum, and some areas that are not very far away. So certainly, mining and extraction is one problem.
And then there’s a lot of poachers that try to get orchids… things like that. And because it’s a really nice part of Ecuador, there’s more and more people wanting to move there, which adds to the ecological and development pressures. People want to cut down the forest and turn it into farms to produce food. That’s kinda what humans do. Certainly, the forests need more protection. Doesn’t matter what country you’re in or what part you know what part there’s this. There’s always people that wanna cut down the trees… destroy the forest.
You know, if you were to take a crew of people and bring them in to pick every single mushroom in the forest… a couple of weeks later, there’d be the same amount of mushrooms. And we actually do that here in California, because in California mushroom picking is illegal in most places. But we have one state park where mushroom picking is allowed, and thousands of people flock to this one little park and pick mushrooms constantly. So, on a Sunday, the parking lot is just full of mushroom pickers, And it’s like that every day during mushroom season. The park is Salt Point State Park. And when I go there, the amount of choice edible mushrooms that I see is absolutely amazing. People get them right next to the trail. But you just go off trail a little bit, and they’re just everywhere. So it seems that mushroom picking doesn’t really affect the habitat, or the future harvests very much. The only thing mushrooms really need to preserve them is for the trees not to be cut down because once the trees are cut down, it takes a very long time to reestablish the mycorrhizal relationships. And if you build a parking lot or farmer’s field, they’re gone for even longer.
So, it’s really habitat protection that mushrooms need. You know the same thing that plants and anything else in the wild need.
VK:
So, what do you think about California’s hands-off approach to tree trimming or controlled burns that some say may help prevent wildfires?
AR:
I think it really messes up the habitat quite a bit when they come in and cut (selectively harvest) some of the trees. Maybe they need to do it some places, because after a couple of centuries of fire suppression, things are completely off balance from what they’re supposed to be. Personally, I would prefer that they do less cutting and less messing with the forest. I think the forest does pretty well on its own.
But you also need to burn occasionally. I don’t know what the best solution is.
VK:
Going back to the topic of conservation and protection for a moment, do you know of any concerted efforts (like the Jungle Keepers are doing in the Peruvian forest) to protect the rainforests of Ecuadorian?
AR:
When I was in Ecuador, we were hanging out with a bunch of scientists from EcoMinga Foundation, and they are heavily involved in trying to protect the Ecuadorian rainforest.
They’re a bunch of biologists. So they’re studying all the different life there, and publishing new species and writing books on it. And they’re lobbying for more protection, based on all of the cool things they’re finding. They were definitely doing good work. But, you know, for every person doing that, there’s a thousand people making a living cutting down the forest.
So, any protection seems like a drop in the bucket.
VK:
It does.
VK:
I heard you say that a lot of the funding in your area of work is for plant diseases, which is pretty typical. Science seems much more focused on fixing problems rather than preventing them.
So, who’s funding the types of projects that you’re working on?
AR:
Most of my funding comes from public speaking. I go to a lot of different events all over, and people will fly me out and pay me to speak there. We apply for grants, but none of those have been approved yet. And I also do consulting for mushroom companies and things like that.
Occasionally, I’ll sell my photography,. I have a website that has a bunch of the prints up. So, kind of like a patchwork of a lot of different things.
VK:
I’d like to ask you about the Sacha Wasi tribe of Ecuador…do you work with them?
AR:
Sacha Wasi was a native tribe that we saw in Ecuador. I wouldn’t say we work with them. We visited them one day. They’re one of the indigenous tribes that most people visit to do ayahuasca.
They took us on a tour of the forest and brought us to a bunch of places and showed us a bunch of things in the woods, and that was pretty neat. They know a lot about plants and insects, and how to sustain themselves out in the rainforest.
VK:
I’m always a bit scared to go out into the rainforest personally, but the possibility of learning from indigenous people makes me more enamored than scared.
AR:
Yeah, my experience in the rainforest has been really safe. Didn’t seem any more dangerous than the forest in Mexico or the US.
There’s occasionally venomous snakes and stuff like that. But I think I’ve only seen one in all my time in Ecuador. They’re around, but they’re not really out to get you. In my case, nothing really got me. And I didn’t feel like anything was after me. So, I think the rainforest is as good a place to wander around as any.
VK:
It sounds really magical.
Going back to the Sacha Wasi for a moment. So, are they just kind of open to engaging with outsiders?
AR:
I’ve been doing ayahuasca retreats for a while. When we went there, there was a guy named Scott who came down from the US. When he first contacted the Sacha Wasi, they were doing ayahuasca retreats, but they didn’t have any kind of marketing. So, he connected them with the rest of the world and made it so people from the US could go down there and visit with Sacha Wasi, and it brought economic benefits to them.
So, you know, this tribe was very authentic in many ways, but then also, all of the children had brand new Samsung phones. They use the Ayahuasca money to connect them with really high-speed Internet. It also helps pay for their schools and build nice houses…so they were kind of an interesting juxtaposition of traditional people and technology, which was all brought to them in the past few years through Scott. So, that’s why they have an Internet presence and you can Google them.
VK:
That’s so interesting. Are you familiar with Ron Teeguarden at all? He owns a company called Dragon Herbs, and he was saying that the Bhutanese peasants their company buys cordyceps from are rich because the cordyceps sell for like $20,000 a pound.
Also, it’s a very treacherous 7-day trek up the mountain to get to it.
OK, so it seems like a lot of people are inspired by the work that you do, and kind of look up to you. Is there one person who inspires you in this field?
AR:
Oh yeah, there’s lots of people that are doing good work.
I see people like Dennis Desjardin or Else Vellinga, Todd Osmundsen, Brian Perry, or Brandon Matheny doing really interesting taxonomic work.
VK:
We don’t really know very much about fungi. We’ve discovered just a very small percentage. Do you find that more heartening or worrisome that we’re potentially wiping out species that may not come back again for a very long time?
AR:
Neither, really.
I think, you know, it makes it an interesting thing to look at, since we know so little about it.
And it’s certainly true that we know very little about fungi compared to the other kingdoms. Fungi are far more mysterious than most kingdoms. There’s a lot of aspects to them that make them very difficult to study. So, I think within the next few hundred years we’ll still know very little about fungi. And that’s just cause they’re complicated.
VK:
Right.
Have you seen anything to indicate they are evolving in unusual ways. For example, in my talk with Garrett Kopp from Birch Boys Chaga, he mentioned that he’s finding chaga growing on trees that it doesn’t normally grow on. And Reishi too. Are you seeing anything like that?
AR:
Well, fungi evolves very slowly. So you know, it takes thousands of years to evolve new fungi species. I think with things like that, that they’ve been growing on these trees that they don’t usually grow on for many thousands of years. It’s just that he’s just recently noticing it. The closer you look at these things, the more you notice.
VK:
Do you find that your intuition has grown as a result of being out and about in nature?
AR:
Yeah, the more you look at things in nature, the more you are able to intuit things about what you’re seeing.
VK:
Well, thank you so much for your time!
Besides the links we’ve listed on where people can find you, do you have any to add?
AR:
Mostly I put my stuff on INaturalist and mushroom observer. So you know everything I see in nature. I put a naturalist and all the good mushroom photos on Mushroom Observer. And those are the citizen science websites where people can upload mushroom photos onto and other people vote on what kind of things they’ve been finding.
So, I definitely like to encourage people to use things like that. So you know your pictures have a permanent place to be stored and are useful to everybody.
And then I post a lot of stuff to Instagram and Facebook and Linkedin and all the social media stuff. So people interested in following me… the best way to do that is just find me on the social media sites.
VK:
Great – and are you gonna be at the LAMS Festival (Los Angeles Mycological Society) this year?
AR:
I don’t think so, but it wouldn’t shock me if I was there. I’m gonna be at the San Diego Fungus Fair. I think that’s the weekend after the LAMS Festival.
VK:
OK, maybe see you there!
AR:
Thank you, it’s been nice talking to you. Bye bye.
Socials:
Website: mycena.llc
Threads: @alan_rockefeller
IG: @alan_rockefeller
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-rockefeller-b1a50720a
X: AlanRockefeller
