09/02/2026
Doing my best to show off the mycological diversity of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Here’s a quick “tap tap cronch” ASMR compilation, meant to expose you to many different types of mushrooms. If you want to learn more about each individual bolete, check out my previous posts. I will editing together a longer educational video touring you through my finds, again, this is intended to entertain you.
As a challenge - can you name all of the bolete genera I show?
Tapping a mushroom is a quick way to judge the density of a mushroom. The more dense/solid sounding the mushroom, the better. Hollow sounding mushrooms are often infested with bugs or have matured past the point of wanting to harvest them as food. Long term studies have demonstrated that there is no significant difference between picking versus cutting mushrooms. Mycelium will produce mushrooms again next year regardless of how you harvest. Just like picking fruit from an apple tree, the fruit will come back again next year regardless of how many apples you pick or how you pick them.
From a functional standpoint, tapping a mushroom helps to dislodge dirt, forest litter, and critters (bugs, slugs, etc...). Tapping can also help disperse a some spores, never a bad thing if you are taking the mushroom out of its environment and putting it in your basket. However, mushrooms are fully capable of spreading spores on their own. My primary reason for tapping mushrooms is not to release spores (despite what people say in the comments).
I wasn’t aware of it until people on social media started commenting on it, but tapping mushrooms produces some wonderful sounds. Each mushroom has it’s own unique resonance. I love to listen to the range of sounds produced by different mushrooms, although boletes tend to provide the best “beats” of all. Much of the tapping I do is as intentional ASMR content
