Caine Barlow

Caine Barlow is a fungi educator and mycologist. He has been foraging fungi for 30 years and cultivating fungi for 15 years. He completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Tasmania in 2012, with a strong focus in plant science, microbiology, and chemistry. In 2019 he completed a Master of Science at the University of Melbourne where his research project was to predict a preliminary conservation status for many Australian fungi. As a fungi educator, Caine is passionate about encouraging people to see fungi in a new light by demonstrating how easy they are to grow in kitchen and garden environments. He likes to inspire a sense of creativity in the cloning and propagation of mycelium, experimentation with different substrates, and how to hack together equipment. When not growing fungi, Caine volunteers his time with Entheogenesis Australis, MYCOmmunity Applied Mycology, the Australian Psychedelic Society, and the Entheome Foundation. He writes for DoubleBlind and is also a regular contributor, “trusted identifier” and administrator on a variety of fungi oriented website forums and facebook groups. In addition to fungi, he has had a long term interest in ethnobotany, ethnobotanical literature, and growing medicinal plants – in particular Cacti and Acacias. He edited the Australian Entheogenic Compendium (Volume One) and was lead editor of the Entheogenesis Australis 2017 Journal.

Caine has an Instagram account “Guerrilla Mycology” where he blogs about his cultivation techniques and the enthnomycology of fungi he finds in the field.