King Charles III, Beloved Mushroom Hunter, Joins TIME 100 Most Influential People List 2023

King Charles III, awaiting his coronation as king of the United Kingdom on May 6, 2023 at Westminster Abbey, was honored by TIME Magazine on their new TIME 100 Most Influential People 2023 list.

When the new annual list is released, the person chosen to write about the TIME 100 honoree, can be as interesting as the list itself.

The person introducing King Charles in the TIME 100 2023 issue is Edward Enninful, OBE, editor-in-chief of British Vogue and Vogue European editorial director. [OBE stands for Order of the British Empire.]

The high-achieving Enninful agrees that on the face of it, he grew up a young Black boy in Ladbroke Grove without understanding how intimately involved then Charles, Prince of Wales was with the Prince’s Trust. The charity had dramatic impact on the lives of Edward’s community, directed by the then Prince on many fronts.

Enninful explains that over the past decade, he has come to know better King Charles III, in particular after becoming a a global ambassador of the Prince’s Trust in 2021.

As a man, the King is not always who people expect him to be. He is charming, funny, socially confident, with a kindness that always seeks to put others at ease. His love for the environment is well documented, but his love for his subjects burns even brighter. The monarchy is not perfect, but in Charles we have a King who understands both tradition and what it takes to evolve with the times. It is a delicate balance and a rare ability. I am excited to see him carry his passions with him into a whole new era.

AOC has written for 15 years about King Charles’ advocacy for the environment, the repair and reuse movement, honoring the craftsmanship of indigenous cultures, and exciting advancements in the field of biomaterials.

In 2020, the Sustainable Markets Initiative [SMI] was formed by global business leaders to support His Majesty King Charles III’s longstanding commitment to Nature, People, and Planet. The Sustainable Markets Initiative, introduced by The Former Prince of Wales at The World Economic Forum 2020 Annual Meeting in Davos, was established to provide a coordinated worldwide effort to enable the private sector to expedite the transition to a sustainable future.” We will highlight their 2022 accomplishments in a separate post.

King Charles Turned to Nature and Mushroom Hunting at a Time of Grief

Just as British Vogue’s EIC Edward Enninful seeks to humanize King Charles III in his commentary for the TIME 100, AOC was impacted by a story that broke last weekend by royal biographer Robert Jobson. As AOC drills deeply into the topic of mushrooms, mycelium, talking plants and future fabrics made of mushrooms and other natural materials, then Prince Charles popped up frequently in our research.

In 1986 England's Prince Charles explained how talking to his plants helped them grow. Ridiculed, the prince held his ground, affirming his private conversations again in 2012, saying "I happily talk to plants and trees and listen to them. I think it's absolutely crucial."

In a spring 2022 BBC1 'The Green Planet' series about the plant world, Sir David Attenborough says that Charles will feel "pretty vindicated because he was ahead of the game." The landmark series shows how plants can think and communicate with each other -- and also respond to human interaction as well.

In one episode, viewers see trees in British forests communicating using fungi networks which connect to their roots. Read AOC: Is Mycelium the Connective Tissue of Nature's Global Communication Network?

Finding Solace in Nature

As Queen Elizabeth neared her final breath last fall, but remaining stable according to her doctors, then Prince Charles left her bedside at Balmoral on the morning of September 8, with Princess Anne and his wife Camilla remaining with his mother.

Prince Charles returned to his estate at Birkhall for a walk in the woods, drawing emotional and psychological sustenance from the trees, the earth and the quiet sound of the River Muick. Perhaps not totally consumed in poetic reflection, Charles made good use of himself, taking a wooden cane and a basket to forage for mushrooms along his walk. These traits seem to be deeply embedded in the King’s personality.

While his four personal protection officers walked behind him, giving him personal space to digest the events about to unfold, one of them was forced to break into the Prince’s reflections with the news that they must return to Balmoral at once. The queen’s health had taken a major turn for the worse.

These events were published in Britain last weekend by royal biographer Robert Jobson, in an extract from his book ‘Our King’.

While some headlines seem to quietly mock King Charles’ mushroom foraging, the actual text by Jobson is empathetic about the royal’s turning to nature for sustenance in his moment of grief and knowledge that his own life was about to change dramatically.

Carolyn Robb, a former chef to the prince, called him one of the forerunners of the organic movement. And in this moment of major upheaval and sadness for Charles, nature was his ally. Nature has always been the new King’s ally.

King Charles III: Forerunner of the Organic Movement

"His farm at Highgrove House was one of the first in the UK to be certified as fully organic," Robb told Food & Wine in 2015. "He also had a traditional English kitchen garden with vegetables and fruit trees. We planned all of the menus around what was in the garden."

This 2023 image from Highgrove Gardens is found in the Stumpery and its focus was snowdrops blooming. We couldn’t ignore the “mushroom caps” that serve as an artistic remind of nature’s gifts to humanity. Clearly, there is no debating King Charles’ love of mushrooms, which are deeply integrated into his life vision. We can be positive that the new king knows the definition of mycelium.

Spring 2023 in ‘The Stumpery’ at Highgrove Gardens IG.

Mushrooms For Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Robb writes of foraging for mushrooms with the prince in her 2015 cookbook "The Royal Touch," saying, "One of my fondest memories of my visits to Balmoral, in Scotland, is of foraging for wild mushrooms in the woods in the late summer, something that we did every year. On a few occasions, I accompanied HRH Prince Charles when he went mushroom picking, which was a privilege and something I greatly enjoyed. HRH's knowledge of wild foods is extensive and I learnt many fascinating things from him on these wonderful outings."

Royal chef Darren McGrady regularly used wild ingredients found at Balmoral Castle when invited to the estate to prepare meals. McGrady recalls combing through Balmoral's 50,000 acre estate to forage for mushrooms. "We came back and sautéed and froze enough wild mushrooms to last months for the royal table," McGrady recollected in his 2007 cookbook ‘Eating Royally’.

"I quickly understood what [then] Prince Charles had known for a long time: Balmoral is an absolute treasure trove of wild mushrooms," McGrady wrote, adding that a rivalry sparked between the Queen's chefs and Charles' chefs because of them.

"Unfortunately, for Prince Charles, the Queen's head chef, Peter Page, also knew that cèpes grew abundantly on the property, and he was adamant that the prince's chefs were not going to take them," McGrady continued. "He organized a mushroom raid across the estate before Prince Charles' entourage arrived at Balmoral."

Charles was not amused . . . and we can be certain that such an injustice will never occur again in the life of King Charles III. ~ Anne