Foraging Her Way To France

LAUREN BANKS ’23 grew up foraging for mushrooms with her mom on the acreage outside their home near Santa Cruz, CA. Lucky for them, chanterelles love redwoods. She and her mom would come home, buckets full, and her mother would cook up mushroom feasts. When Lauren got to UP, she became a biology/French major and realized that mushrooms were more than a culinary passion. They were also a lens to examine climate science and the ways in which mushrooms aid healthy ecosystems. She began asking questions about how mycelium networks, created by mushrooms and trees, play a role in the uptake of water and nutrients by trees. When a forest fire broke out on her family property in 2020—fought for weeks, heroically, by her brothers—Lauren also became interested in how fungi work to regenerate soil after fires. Which fungal species would be the first to recolonize the soil? (The jury’s still out—since the fire on her family’s land, there have been no mushrooms.)

During her sophomore year she started University of Portland’s Mycology Club. The goal was education, teaching such useful things as: never eat a mushroom unless you’re totally certain what it is; when you do find edible mushrooms, leave some behind so that more will grow; mushroom recipes should be shared; and it’s probably best to walk away from a slimy-looking chanterelle because it could be a poisonous jack-o’-lantern mushroom. A small group would go out foraging near Mount Hood and on the Coast (often good spots to find porcinis). Even Forest Park, a stone’s throw from UP’s campus, has plenty of mushroom offerings. The club was a resounding success, with membership growing to nearly 90 students.

Now, Lauren is taking her research interests to the next level. She won a Fulbright scholarship to study at the École Normale Supérieure de Rennes (ENS Rennes)—a graduate-level program with self-directed projects in water and soil science. She will bring her own specific interest in the impact of microbes (fungi, specifically) on soil regeneration and the health of a forest ecosystem.