Missouri woods—backlog—gorgeous edible mushrooms* II

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

Blah blah blah excuses about not posting blah blah blah.

Here are some more beautiful mushrooms I found and ate (last fall). As ever, these were in state parks mere minutes from home. I guess I could drive further, and try new spots, but why? Mushrooms are everywhere (or rather, mushrooms are everywhere, if there’s enough rain…).

Hericium coralloides

Above, Hericium coralloides. My hiking pal ate these. There was a big fallen tree just bursting with these—and once again, right on the trail.

They are delicate and a little hard to clean, but delicious. I don’t even want to tell you what the flavor reminds me of, so you don’t go looking for them.



Common name “comb tooth.” This little one, spilling out from a crack in a fallen tree, is about 2” long.

When I collect these I put them in their own bag to keep them as clean as possible. A lot can get stuck in all those little crevices…

Next is another Hericium, H. erinaceus, common name lion’s mane, bearded tooth, pom pom, satyr's beard, bearded hedgehog, bear paw, monkey fist, for starters. “Erinaceus” comes from ancient Greek for “hedgehog.”

Hericium erinaceus

That’s not my knife so I can’t tell you how big it is for scale. I know that chunk is about 6”, though.

This one we could see from the comb tooth, as I recall!

That’s one beautiful lion’s mane.

Oh, look, there’s another one, also visible right from the trail!





Younger growth on the right--spines are shorter.

Doesn’t get much better than this, people. They are succulent and sweet at this stage; if they’re starting to turn yellow, they develop a sour/bitter tang with a funny aftertaste.

I’m pretty enamored of their structure:


God bless whoever figured out these were edible.

Here’s a little one just starting out:

Only about 3” from top to bottom…

Moving on, we have a little story.

Went on a nice 2-day foray with the new local branch of the Missouri Mycological Society…but it was during last year’s late summer drought. Oh, sure, we found some stuff, but it paled in comparison to what we would have found in a year of typical rainfall. Usually, a fall foray produces tables loaded with specimens, a buffet of succulent, bizarre shapes. That year, the pickings were slim, and many were shriveled and dull from lack of moisture. Some were flat-out dried. But heading home after 2 happy days of clomping around in the woods with like-minded people, I decided to check a big tree I’d stumbled upon the year before, which had a lumpy mass growing at the base. I had no idea what it was, but after poring over field guides later, it finally registered what it might have been…a very young Grifola frondosa, or hen of the woods. Which I don’t have a picture of. But this is what I found:

Grifola frondosa

a)

b)

a) A shot on the trunk of my car, for scale.
b) A shot on a scale, for scale. Eight pounds 4 ounces! One mushroom!

I was very happy! I called the guy who led the foray as soon as I saw it. I had to call somebody! Somebody who would understand! It was my first real hen! Found on the drive home, 15 minutes after leaving a 2-day foray! After 2 days of looking for mushrooms and not finding much!

G. frondosa, pore surface

The picture above is a different one! But it’s still a hen of the woods! It’s one they found on the foray!

This is the pore surface (on its underside). There seems to be 2 color phases of hens, grey or tan.
Crashing waves! Driftwood! Delicious!

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.

Oyster mushrooms

Once you see a young Pleurotus ostreatus, I don't see how you could mistake anything else for these. But you can, and I sure have, because I didn't know what I was looking at, until I'd seen lots of them.

I've only been at this for a year, and I find plenty of mushrooms that at first glance look pretty oystery. Then I see something like the gills aren't running down the stem like they're supposed to, or the gills are too close together or too even and regular, or it doesn't have that lovely faint fish odor, and I am disappointed, but I pick myself up by my hiking boots and move on with my life. There will be more.

I know this because mushrooms are everywhere, EVEN WHEN IT HASN'T RAINED FOR A SOLID MONTH and all the leaves are falling so you can't see hardly anything on the forest floor and when you're hiking with someone and they get a little ahead of you you can't hear a word they say because of the leaf crunching so you have to stop walking and keep yelling "What???" all the time.

But the mushrooms that grow on trees and logs keep going because there's plenty of moisture there. That's nice, because most of my favorites grow on wood anyway.

All that wavy, decurrent-gill goodness...with a light ocean fragrance.





Here's a few more from the same tree:

And here's some tiny tiny TINY baby ones, tucked into an old woodpecker-hole--they were less than 1/4" tall (but, can you even be referred to as "tall" if you're only 1/4"?).

When they're this small they're called "pins" in the growing trade! This growth stage is called "pinning."
Here's a link to a whole bunch more pics of oyster mushrooms I've found: "Oysters"

I love oyster mushrooms. They're pretty abundant around here. I like to just saute a whole bunch of them and eat them straight from the bowl, because I am a pig glutton.

Bearded Tooth in my backyard!

In my back yard!!!

I drove into the little parking area in back, turned off the engine and sort of idly noticed that there was a new section of fence over there, and there it was, a lovely little Hericium erinaceus just sitting there in the tree next to the storage shed. It's an urban area, I tell you! Lots of college students in rented houses. House/driveway/house/driveway neighborhood.

Not a house in the country

That white dot on the tree is it

In my backyard!

About the size of a nice orange.

It was in my back yard! When I saw it, I felt like I just realized I was holding a winning lottery ticket. You may think I exaggerate, but I do not.  I wish I understood why I find it such a thrill to find choice edible mushrooms. I can't even think of what to compare it to. I wouldn't necessarily say it's the absolute best feeling I've ever had, but there is something kind of addictive about it. Someone should do a study.

You know why I found this in my back yard? I'll tell you why. It's because mushrooms are everywhere, that's why.

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.