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.