Description

This special 4-hour foraging class in Canton, Texas will introduce you to both plants and mushrooms of the edible, medicinal and toxic types.  Courtney will cover the wild plant portion, and mycology expert Sebastian Tabibi will help you learn about the mushrooms of East Texas, their habitat and growth conditions, identification, edibility or toxicity, and uses.

After an introduction to the topic of foraging wild plants and mushrooms, we will take a walk through the open areas and forests on this property, finding and learning about many species along the way.  We can forage useful plants that are present in abundance, and collect any mushrooms we find to serve as specimens to examine in detail.  After the walk, we will return back to our meeting area for a mushroom specimen examination and Q&A, so you can integrate what you have learned.

Since this is a 4-hour class, instead of my usual 2.5-hour classes, we will be able to cover more material, ensuring that we comprehensively address both the wild plants and mushrooms that are available!

When:  Saturday, November 14th from 11:00 am until 3:00 pm
Where:  Private property in Canton, Texas – address will be emailed to paid participants one week before class date
Contribution:  $70 per adult, $20 for teens or kids

Participation in this class includes 4 hours of hands-on foraging experience, learning mushroom and plant identification, the opportunity to ask questions, as well as a copy of Courtney’s 63-page ebook, North Texas Edible Wild Plant Basics, and educational mushroom PDFs by Sebastian.

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About Courtney:

Courtney Taylor has been foraging wild food for almost 25 years, in a variety of ecosystems and climates from the tropical jungles of Hawaii to the arid hills of Arizona and northern California, but the majority of her experience is in North Texas, which she has called home for most of her life so far. She’s been teaching foraging classes for about 14 years, and has compiled her North Texas teaching and foraging experience into an ebook that can be seen as a friendly and approachable introduction to the topic of botany and our local wild food species.

She owns a robust library of foraging and botany books (all of which she has actually read), and is primarily self-taught.

In addition to teaching classes throughout the year, Courtney runs two large foraging groups on Facebook:

• East Texas Foraging (ETF) is an active online group of foraging enthusiasts, also open to the “foraging-curious”. It started as a local Canton group created as a result of the first class Courtney taught on the same Canton property where our November 14th class will be held, but has spread widely across FB and now has more than 45,000 members.  It has been running since 2021.
• Wild Foraging North Texas has been the primary North Texas foraging group on FB since about 2013, and currently has almost 18,000 members.

Courtney has extensive experiencing harvesting, processing and creating delicious food from the staple wild food sources in Texas, as well as many more obscure and medicinal species.  Most of her classes are foraging walks that cover every edible and medicinal species found in that area in that particular season, but over the past few years she has branched out into teaching specialty plant processing classes for the most common and highly sought after wild foods in our area, including acorns, black walnuts, hackberries, mesquite pods, elderberry, prickly pear, and more.

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About Sebastian:

Sebastian Tabibi is the founder and president of the North Texas Mycological Association (NTMA), a non-profit organization dedicated to mycology that serves the 7.5 million residents of North Texas. He has been studying and foraging for fungi since 2012, with a particular focus on medicinal mycology and mapping local fungal biodiversity.

Sebastian is a prominent figure in the mycological community, known for:

• Founding the North American Mycological Association (NAMA) chapter in North Texas, which was established as an official club in 2022.
• Creating large online communities, including the Mushroom Identification Page (nearly 250,000 members) and the Mushroom Edibility & Discussion group, where he assists with emergency poison identification.
• Leading guided forays, educational workshops, and annual events like MushFest, which cover topics such as mushroom cultivation, microscopy, and safe identification of edible versus toxic species.

His work emphasizes citizen science and community engagement, aiming to bridge the gap in fungal knowledge by partnering with institutions like Austin College and the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. He advocates for hands-on learning to help people reconnect with nature and understand the ecological roles of fungi, including their potential in bioremediation and medicine.

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Cancellation policy:  You may cancel your reservation up to 48 hours prior to the class time, and will receive a refund minus a 20% cancellation fee.  Alternately, you may roll your class reservation over to a future class (whether currently scheduled or not) with no penalties.  Since our classroom is outdoors, classes will occur in a variety of weather conditions, including heat, cold, and light rain, but we will reschedule class in cases of heavy rain or thunderstorms.  By signing up for this class, you are agreeing to this policy.