In August, when the rains saturate the forests of the Sierra Hidalguense and the soil begins to exhale that particular humidity that smells of living earth, Francisca Quiroz Olvera has already been walking for hours. She knows exactly which tree to look for, on which side of the slope, at what time of day. She knows which mushrooms appear in the first week of rain and which wait until the second month. She knows which ones can be eaten raw, which ones need to be cooked well, and which ones never. Her knowledge is immense — and she learned it where what really matters is learned: in the forest, with her family, since childhood.
Nanacatera: the most honest title
Francisca is a nanacatera — from the Nahuatl nanácatl, mushroom. It is the name that the indigenous peoples of central Mexico give to women who specialize in the identification, collection, and commercialization of wild edible mushrooms. It is not an academic title. It is something better: it is a community's recognition of someone who truly knows the forest.
Originally from Omitlán de Juárez — a municipality nestled in the Comarca Minera of Hidalgo, among the forests surrounding Mineral del Chico and Mineral del Monte — Francisca has been collecting in the forests of the Sierra Hidalguense for as long as she can remember. The knowledge she possesses was inherited from her family through generations of rainy season walks: what species grows on which tree, what signs indicate that the mushroom is ready to be collected, what cutting techniques do not damage the mycelium so that the mushroom continues to produce the following season.
The First International Mushroom Festival — Mineral del Chico, 2025
In 2025, Francisca was invited as an exhibitor to the First International Mushroom Festival held in Mineral del Chico, Hidalgo — an event that brought together mycologists, biologists, chefs, artists, and fungal enthusiasts from across the country and abroad.
At that festival, Francisca gave a lecture where she shared her field knowledge: the species of the Hidalguense forest, responsible collection techniques, the relationship between nanacateras and the forest ecosystem.
She also participated as a local guide in field tours, taking festival participants to the region's forests to identify species in their natural habitat. Her practical knowledge — what to look for, how to distinguish, what to respect — was the irreplaceable complement to the academic knowledge of the mycologists present.
The knowledge that protects the forest
One dimension of the work of nanacateras that is rarely recognized is their role as guardians of the integrity of the forest ecosystem. The collection techniques that Francisca practices and teaches — not tearing out the mycelium, not collecting immature specimens, not compacting the growing soil — are protocols for sustainable management of natural resources that academic science confirms but that nanacateras have been practicing since before the concept of sustainability existed.
And deeper than the technique: the economic interest of nanacateras in the living forest. When the forest produces mushrooms that the family can eat and sell, the forest is worth more standing than cut down. Nanacateras are natural allies of forest conservation — not out of ideology, but out of economics and culture.
Collaboration with Simbiosis
The collaboration between Francisca and Simbiosis is a bridge between worlds that rarely speak to each other: the ancestral knowledge of the forests and the urban market for functional mushrooms; the wisdom of someone who walks the forest at dawn and the Mexico City consumer who takes Reishi extract capsules in the morning.
It's not a decorative collaboration. It's a conviction: that the most honest way to work with mushrooms is to recognize the people who truly know them, make them visible, and create mechanisms for the value they generate to return to the communities that are their origin.
The visual pieces we create together document the mycological universe of the Hidalgo forests from the perspective of someone who knows them from within. They are not textbook illustrations. They are portraits of knowledge.
Source
The First International Mushroom Festival was held in Rocabosque, Mineral del Chico, Hidalgo, in 2025, organized by Rocabosque and publicized by local media. Francisca Quiroz Olvera's participation (lecture and field tour guide) was documented in the expedition chronicle published by Pregúntale al Biólogo.
→ The Nanacateras — guardians of the Mexican fungal forest
→ Fungal Art — collaborations by Francisca and César Kevin
→ Hongosto — wild mushroom season in Mexico
→ Foraging tours with Simbiosis