Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Across Europe, wild mushroom foraging is frequently portrayed as undergoing a contemporary revival, driven by renewed interest in local foods, outdoor activities, digital communities, field guides, and identification applications. Drawing on 72 semi structured and open interviews conducted during ethnomycological field studies (2022–2024), this study examines changing relationships between communities and forest ecosystems across three European macro areas: the Western Italian Alps (Val Pellice and Pradeboni–Valle Pesio), the Eastern Italian Alps (Cadore and Cortina d’Ampezzo), and the former German Democratic Republic (Eichsfeld and Harz uplands). Through free listing of foraged fungal taxa, analysis of vernacular nomenclature, and comparative qualitative interpretation, we identify a process of knowledge rarefaction: the decline in the density, specificity, and intergenerational transmission of place based ethnomycological knowledge despite increasing visibility of mushroom related practices. Across the study areas, local ecological knowledge (LEK) is increasingly concentrated among ageing knowledge holders and is affected by rural depopulation, linguistic change, generational discontinuity, and shifting institutional contexts. The former German Democratic Republic provides a distinctive example of how broader socio political transformations can reshape previously institutionalised cultures of mushroom expertise. Drawing on Ingold’s concept of the “education of attention” and Tsing’s notion of the “arts of noticing,” we argue that ethnomycological expertise develops through prolonged engagement with particular landscapes and cannot be fully reproduced through information based forms of learning alone. Contemporary digital and media mediated forms of mushroom engagement may expand participation and visibility while not necessarily restoring the situated ecological knowledge embedded in long term human–forest interactions. We suggest that contemporary foraging revival represents a paradoxical process: broadening in social reach while potentially becoming thinner in ecological depth and cultural embeddedness. Recognising and supporting vernacular knowledge, local languages, and intergenerational learning processes is therefore essential for conserving biocultural diversity and sustaining adaptive relationships between rural communities and forest ecosystems.</p>