June mushrooms of glorious shapes

Getting to the good stuff now!

I was hunkered down in some cedars taking pictures of these and a man on the trail asked me what I was doing.





I stared at him, wild-eyed, and snarled, “Don’t look at me! I’m hideous!!!"



But these Lycoperdon perlatum are not hideous. They are wonderful.
For the record, these "gem-studded puffballs" grow from the ground, in case you're confusing them with the similar Lycoperdon pyriforme, which always grow from wood.

Below, the biggest wood ear I've ever found!

And here’s a tree with the most wood ears I've ever seen. This is only half of them—there was this much more further up the tree, too.

And here are some of the most beautiful wood ears I've ever seen.





Now you know why I prefer overcast days for photos.

Below, some of that crazy ozonium of Coprinellus domesticus (C. radians is similar, but apparently does not come with ozonium). The orange fuzz is the mycelium erupting out onto the surface, instead of staying below things like it usually does (underground, under bark, etc.). I can’t find much info about it at all. What the heck does “form genus of imperfect fungi” mean? One site refers to it as “air mycelium.” The domain name www.ozonium.com is available. There is a player on Lolking named Ozonium. That is all I could find online.

The Latin name of this mushroom sticks in my mind because on mushroomexpert.com the ozonium is described as “orange shag carpeting”, which is in houses, which is domestic.

Here’s a pic on my Flickr account of the first time I encountered it. The first comment under it is funny.

Beetle galleries

Next is a gorgeous Laetiporus cincinnatus I found, visible from the trail (doesn’t anybody hike on these trails?).



There it is, and suddenly there’s my foot and you can see how big it is.




Absolutely prime and pristine.



The conversation went like this: “Oh! How beautiful! Thank you so much! What’s the occasion?” And the forest replied, “Oh, no occasion at all, we just thought you’d like this.”

Missouri woods—backlog—gorgeous edible mushrooms* I

*This is not a mushroom ID blog! Please use many resources when identifying mushrooms.

After a nice 2012 morel-hunting season (but almost 2 months earlier than normal—!), a severe drought started here in central Missouri. Spring started out fine, but then it stopped raining, in MARCH. I lost my hiking/blogging momentum.

There was a nice rain about 2 months in, and I headed out all hopeful, but 15 minutes into it crashed into not one, but two horrific, enormous clouds of seed ticks—mission aborted.

We’ve had some rain recently, and I’ve been getting out there (still slim pickins), but why did I never post this stuff from last fall? So, here comes everything, in a few separate posts, in roughly chronological order. From last fall.



Above and below, gorgeous young chicken of the woods, mid-September. Saturated with rain, so the color is even brighter.


I swear the color is not tweaked. They really can be so bright it almost hurts your eyes.

Below, more Laetiporus sulphureus, but older specimens, and not wet from recent rain.

The pale grey horizontal stroke in the background is the trail in a very popular park! We harvested a lot of this, and left some, and later were swapping foray stories and found out that a friend of ours got what we left. “Oh, that was you guys? Thanks for leaving me some!”

I like them this young:


Chicken of the woods turns butter bright yellow:


Oh, man, if you’ve ever eaten these I know you’re in a reverie just looking at this! But wait ‘til you see the next one! Vegans, don’t look, you’ll hurt yourself!


Sautéed chicken of the woods on rib eye with gorgonzola and asparagus. That was a great day.

A few more Chicken of the Woods finds (extra deluxe)

These images are in hard-to-believe colors, but it's all true. The first one (below) we found the day after a good hard rain, and it was young and vibrant anyway, but I'm telling you, we could see this sucker from light years away. This was shot in the sun, which is rare for me. Also, it was juicy and succulent, nearly dripping as we harvested the most tender outer edges.

Laetiporus sulphureus

But this one, this one was the most perfect one I've found all season, tender enough to simply slice thin and saute and serve solo. And its pore surface is this incomprehensible yellow, and it comes in these wonderful shapes.

Happy Birthday to ME!

(FOUND on my birthday, not POSTED on my birthday)

So, mushrooms can be gorgeous, and you can EAT some of them! To hell with flowers!

Mushroom foray assortment, Sept. 17

Yellow fairy cups, Bisporella citrina.
These are only about 1/8” across, from a little distance they just look like a vague yellow something on a log.

Mycena haematopus

Plum-colored lovelies.
These are all over the place, at this stage they’re a beautiful soft frosted purple, with a “bloom” on them like grapes. Some great common names: blood-foot Mycena, bleeding fairy helmet, the burgundydrop bonnet, or the bleeding Mycena. All the common names (and the Latin specific epithet) refer to the purple-red juice they exude from the stem when crushed. They lose the purple color as they age, fading to tan.

            
(L, above) Fairy fingers, Clavaria vermicularis, more evidence of fairies. These are about 3/16th of an inch thick (kind of big for the fairies I know).

(R, above) Gem-studded puffball, Lycoperdon perlatum. The surface texture is very delicate and rubs off at the slightest touch.

 
Very young chicken-of-the-woods, Laetiporus sulphureus. This wonderful cloud-like formation will expand into overlapping fans of zoned orange above, bright smooth clear yellow below.
It’s fall, it’s mushroom season in a big way, I can barely keep up with all the mushrooms out there now.

Laetiporus cincinnatus, for real this time

Spilling out of a tree

Laetiporus cincinnatus white pore surface

In between things

A friend called me on the Mushroom Hotline to tell me about some mushrooms growing in his yard (not these--some great Omphalotus illudens, coming soon), and I could see this in his neighbor's yard. 

My friend wasn't home yet and the neighbors weren't home either, so I couldn't ask them if I could have it, and it took a LOT of strength of will for me to not just harvest it and run. But it all worked out--I found a perfectly ripe pawpaw on the ground nearby which I DID take without asking anyone because I've had a long-running issue with pawpaws, namely, that I've heard about them and was intrigued by them and I've never seen one fruiting (I see the pretty blue-green trees in the woods all the time, with blooms) and never eaten one and people keep telling me, "Oh, they had them at the Farmers Market last week!" and I had just talked about them again two days earlier so I decided that pawpaw had my name on it, and I took it. I saw it lying there, wondered what it was, the leaves of the tree registered, the decision was made, it was in my bag. Look, know, take. That's how long it took.

When I got home I called my foodie friend down the street, and we shared it, and it was magnificent. Totally made my day.

And since then, my friend did talk to his neighbors who said I could have the Chicken with their blessing, so tomorrow I'm going back over there to take more pics of the Omphalotus and hopefully those little girls a few houses down haven't messed up the chicken too bad (they got curious when I was taking pics, and by the time I was leaving they were poking it with sticks or something).

Note: this is an atypical form of L. cincinnatus, they usually grow near the base of trees or a little distance from the tree, seemingly from the ground, but really on an underground root. And usually in a rosette pattern, not overlapping shelves like this. Several people reported atypical growths of these this year.

The title of this post is referring to the previous post where I was getting all whipped up about some mushrooms I found that I thought were Laetiporus cincinnatus. I found them when they were quite small and I was tracking them, and on the 3rd visit I harvested them, and even showed them to people at work (oh, great! now people with even less familiarity with mushrooms have been given the wrong information by someone they think knows things!), until I finally realized they weren't Chicken mushrooms at all. I was chagrined (also taken aback, also brought up short. Chicken mushrooms are supposed to be one of the easiest ones. I just need to slow down).

Anyway--how 'bout those shapes, eh?

Laetiporus cincinnatus looks just like cooked chicken

 















NOT chicken, chicken of the woods MUSHROOM!

The hunt and capture of the chicken of the woods

Top two images are first day; bottom is next day.

Found this sitting there under a tree in a park, minding its own business (as far as I could tell). This very choice edible, this Laetiporus cincinnatus ("chicken of the woods"). Ran home to get positive ID (this is kind of funny now, as it is considered one of the easiest for beginners to ID. Now I would know in one second, but this really was in the very first month of my mushroom fascination, and the first one I'd ever seen). Positively identified it, it was quite a young specimen, went back the next day to nab it (after hardly being able to sleep, worrying that someone else would find it) and I was horrified to find the park swarming with hundreds of people for some event, was sure someone would have messed with it. But I could see this sucker from the parking lot, because it was so big, and so luminous. I snuck up on it and cut it. I don't understand why no one else seemed to have seen it, or kicked it, or picked it. I've got a picture of it from about 200' away, looking like a plastic milk bottle or a grocery bag in the distance.

As they get older they start to flare out into more shelf-like fans, and they get dry and woody, so you can really only eat the outer edges. Not my problem.

Although it seemed to be growing from the grass, it was actually attached to an underground root; these always grow on wood (not logs--trees with some life still in them).

Sauteed, not mushroomy at all, a completely new flavor. Great meaty texture.

Risotto w/ mushroom & gorgonzola--I died.

Did I mention it weighed over 2-1/4 pounds? Well, it did. And that's a small one--I've seen pictures of HUGE growths of them, "over 30 lbs," they say.