A Cautionary Tale

I can never stress enough the importance of being absolutely certain you have properly identified a mushroom before eating it. Whenever someone who is starting out hunting wild mushrooms for the first time asks me which mushrooms they should learn about and try to find first, I always say the poisonous ones in your area. Only by knowing what all of the known poisoners are will you ever be certain about other IDs. Here is a basic but good guide for poisonous mushrooms in Missouri.

And certainty is the top priority. This must be followed with no exceptions. I've mentioned old adages before to help folks remember such as "when in doubt throw it out" or "white on white ain't right" referring to several deadly forms of amanitas. There even the old standard, "there are old mushroom hunters and bold mushrooms hunters, but there are no old bold mushroom hunters."

However, these are just words and nothing hits home better than a good story. So here is one that happened almost literally in my own backyard (it was actually the backyard next door).

About a week ago my neighbor, who I have never really spoken to about mushrooms before, noticed some firm white buttons growing in her yard by the sidewalk. They were very fresh and smelled like the ones you see in the store and with a novices eyes, they even kind of looked like them.

She took them inside and googled "white mushroom." She read a few pages and compared pictures and since they looked a lot like the photos she saw, she figured they were ok to eat. With her dinner that night, she ate two nice sized buttons sliced up with her salad. I think but am not certain that she ate them raw. Another no-no in the mushroom world. Even if they were edible, they could have had bacteria which could have contributed to what was to follow.

About 4 hours later the symptoms hit which included very violent gastrointestinal distress. What she described was not pleasant. It was a perfect description of what Kuo refers to as Human Faucet Syndrome (basically uncontrollable movements out of both ends) as your body tries to get rid of the toxin. After a few hours of this, she eventually had her daughter call the paramedics.

I do not think that they IDed the mushroom, but based on the rapid onset of her symptoms they could rule out the more toxic varieties which usually don't show symptoms until 36 to 48 hours later. And the general course of treatment for the less deadly poisoning is to help the person get rid of what they ate, then they usually recover, which thankfully is what happened in this case.

However, do not think that just because a mushroom is only poisonous and not deadly it can't kill you. This particular mushroom has killed people before, mainly those who were really young, old, or sick. It also is known for several dog and cat deaths.

After talking with my neighbor, I asked her to let me know if she saw any more so I could try and ID them for her. She brought me these buttons a few days later. It was hard to ID these because they were so young.

I posted them on several boards and got a range of responses as to potential IDs, which goes to show how hard it is to ID something with just a few photos.

She finally brought over a large fully opened one and I immediately knew what it was, the infamous green-spored lepiota (chlorophyllum molybdites). Even experienced hunters have been tripped up by this one because it looks a lot like the parasol mushroom which is a tasty edible. The give away is the spore print which is green. Sometimes as they get older the gills turn green with the spores, but usually it is hard to tell just by looking and so a spore is necessary to be certain.

Top view

Bottom view (notice the green tinge to the gills)

I told her what she had eaten and how lucky she was that it was not something more deadly which also grows in her lawn and looks very similar in the button stage. The doctors had already warned her of these and after the ordeal, she has sworn off all mushrooms, so I don't think I need to worry about her eating anything else. Oh and did I say that she is a nurse.

It just goes to show how anyone can make an innocent mistake if they are not certain. Wild mushrooms are no thing to toy with.

The Mother Patch

There is a park in town that several of us have nicknamed Chanty Park. It is a great park with large fields, several streams, and some large wooded areas. But back in one wooded draw along an intermittent spring-fed stream is a valley that is full of smooth chanterelle patches. I know at least 7 people who pick here and there is more than enough to go around.

When I was first exploring this area and saw this valley I knew there had to be something special up top on the ridge. In my experience I find patches of chants always seem to travel down washes into valleys like these so I figured there must be patches up top that had seeded all the ones at the bottom. I backtracked down the valley and walked the entire ridge not seeing any mushrooms except for a mess of aging black-staining polypores.

As I neared the ridge top at the head of the valley, I saw those familiar orange dots up ahead. They were everywhere. The patch was at least 1,000 square feet and it was loaded. A few weeks ago as the chants were just starting to really flush, I took a few photos from the middle of the patch. You will have to zoom in to see all of the orange dotting the hillside.

Down the hill

Up the hill

To the left

To the right

This is what I would call a mother patch. I believe this massive patch has been sending spores washing down the valley for years, resulting in the virtual chanterelle farm below. I shared the location of the mother patch and my hypothesis with a few fellow hunters who pick out there (they hadn't actually found it yet, because there really was no need to leave the valley when you could pick your fill there). After checking it out, they tended to agree with me.

Has anyone else found these sorts of mother patches of smooth chants? If so, leave a comment and your thoughts to how patches spread. Happy picking.

Nature's Fungal Fireworks - Chanterelles

Right now the woods are really starting to come alive with some vibrantly colored and just as tasty mushrooms. Chanterelle patches paint the forest with glorious sprays of red, yellow, and orange. They light up the forest floor much like the fireworks everyone will be enjoying this upcoming weekend.

True to their golden nature they can even give one a sense of that prospectors of old, discovering hidden veins. Stumbling on a hillside of chanterelles can bring back feelings reminiscent of the spring rush of finding morels. However, you can quickly be overwhelmed by the shear numbers you can pick, as that hillside could easily contain three, four, even ten thousand mushrooms.

So, if you are one of those feeling overwhelmed, here are a few tips that I follow to help ease the anxiety.

1. Become a picker - accept the fact that in the summer, in Missouri at least, there is almost no competition for chanterelles or other mushrooms for that matter. Unlike morel season, where the local public spots become parking lots and every good tree has a path to it with every leaf and rock log, stick and rock disturbed, your only competition in sumer is the maggots who like to grow up in the meaty caps. And even when the chants are buggy, you can usually still pick enough to trim off good mess of clean bug-free edges to eat.
   
   
2. Become a chooser - when you have many choice you can really move beyond picking to choosing. I generally will not pick any chanterelles unless the cap is bigger than 2 inches. This means that I mainly pick smooth chants, since they grow larger than the common ones and the cinnabars. But that is OK by me. The smooth chants come in larger patches and are much more prolific. They are meatier and I think a little tastier. Also they store a little longer when kept fresh in the fridge. I usually keep them in paper bags stored in a paper towel-lined vegetable drawer.
   
   One note on taste. Since I rarely pick any under 2 inches I don't pick a lot of cinnabars. I do pick some to add color to chant dishes, but I don't really eat enough of them to be a true judge. Several people recently have told me that they think the cinnabars have the most flavor (black trumpets excluded). I'll let you be the judge.
   
   
3. Become a saver - there are many ways to preserve your bountiful catch of chanterelles. You can of course dry them. They are good reconstituted in soups and stews, but tend to be a little chewy. Also drying them doesn't seem to concentrate the flavor like it does with other mushrooms, like black trumpets and morels. I only recommend drying a few. I am experimenting with some dried batches by soaking them in brandy to make my own chanterelle-infused liquor. In another 6 months we shall see if it was successful.
   
   You can also cook them up a bit like you would normally and then freeze them in usable batches. I have not tried this, but it has been recommended by many hunters and it works well for morels. However the best way to preserve taste and texture is to can them. This takes a lot of time and a lot of mushrooms, however it can really pay off. One good week of hunting and canning will ensure fresh chanterelles for many years to come. I provide the canning directions I use along with more information on this old post on Preserving Chants.
   

That should help with the anxiety, but let me give you a few tips to make the picking easier when they are really numerous.

• Ditch the basket...if you normally use one. It is heavy and needless. I use paper sacks instead. Start with small paper bags like you used for a sack lunch. These work well because you limit crushing because you can only stack so many in one of those lunch bags. Once full, I carry these bags in a larger grocery store paper sack, preferably ones with those nice handles. Hy-Vee is a good source for these.
  
  
• Ditch the knife! I know people who pick and snap off the stem, but there is nothing like a nice clean cut. Chanterelles are usually barely standing there propped up by leaf litter and sticks, and often take two hands to cut to be sure you don't damage them. Using scissors instead makes the process a lot faster. You can lop off entire clusters in one quick snip. the only downside is the occasional stick that pokes up and clogs the blades.
  
  
• DON'T ditch your discretion! Last but not least, this is most important of all. When you are home cleaning hundreds and hundreds of the suckers, please stay vigilant and check every single mushroom to make sure they are all chants. You don't know how many times I have found a lone gilled mushroom hiding out in a bag of chants. Almost indistinguishable amidst its fungal brethren and perfectly hidden, you have to be very careful. Generally these are lacarria or some russala species; however, one quick oversight could easily be your last, as all it would take is a single deadly galerina to sneak into the mix. So make sure all of them are clearly chants. I throw out anything that is even the least bit questionable just to be safe. Your mushrooms should all look like these.

Summer Mushrooms - Boletus Atkinsonii

Every summer I try to focus on finding and identifying at least 1 or 2 new edibles and giving them a try. This year I decided that I would focus on boletes. Generally the boletes in our area are fairly safe. There are no known deadly boletes but there are still a few that can get you quite sick, so it is still good to be cautious. Now I have found and eaten a few boletes in the past. Everyone must try the Old Man of the Woods at least once (though if you do, I highly suggest trying them dry and NOT fresh), and I have had my share of easy to ID shrooms, like the easy to ID gilled-bolete.

The main reason I have waited this long is that when you get into some of the better edible boletes it can be very hard and challenging to identify them. Take for example, the bolete photographed above. Micheal Rogers found these early on in the week. He sent photos around to several experts including Tom Volk who thought it matched pretty well with Boletus Nobilissimus. Missouri Mycological Society member Jay Justice, probably the leading expert on Bolete ID, for our area suggested that they were either Boletus variipes or B. atkinsonii. So which is it?

Tom Volk has probably the most experience, having seen mushrooms across the country and around the world, and based on the cap color and description it really does align well with the noble bolete. However, there is something said for local knowledge and the noble bolete has only been found in New York . Jay who knows mushrooms of the MIdwest and Missouri knows what has been found and so his suggestion is probably a more reasonable educated guess. Lucky in this case all of these are edible, so you don't necessarily have to have a exact ID to be comfortable enjoying these. And let me tell you they are well worth it. Not bad at all fresh, but rivals the King Bolete himself, the porcini, in nutty flavor and richness when dried.

This only highlights the difficulty of merely trying to ID a bolete by only using macroscopic features, or only those features that are visible to the naked eye. Often times, you must look at the spores to be truly sure. Luckily there is a short cut that can often help you avoid purchasing and dusting off your microscope skills. Luckily, many boletes can be ID'ed by judging there chemical reactions to certain substance. There are actually three chemicals that professional and amateur mycologists use to ID boletes, however, two of them, iron salts & potassium hydroxide can be rather hard to come by for the average person. Luckily the last one is ammonia which is readily available in any grocery or household store (though get the pure form and not some lemon-scented version). Using just a few drops can often tell you what bolete you have in front of you.

So let's return back to the suspect bolete in question. I had the two options above and in my own research, I found reference to another bolete common to the Midwest (mainly Illinois) that fit the bill, boletus reticulatus .

In fact, after going out with Michael on Friday to see some of them myself,

I was pretty convinced that what he had found was indeed reticulatus because it was a perfect match. However, when I finally tested a cap with ammonia here is what I saw. The drop flashed and then turned a nice shade of magenta, which meant it was most likely boletus atkinsonii. B nobillisimus turns purple as well, but since it hasn't been found outside of NY, I am ruling it out. B reticulatus was the other one, but ammonia will either not react with the cap, or it will turn it a dull orange, which was not the case.

So do not be afraid of boletes, generally anything that doesn't bruise blue or have red or orange pores is fair game in our neck of the woods. But if you add and carry around a small dropper of ammonia in your bag, you can be more certain of which boletes you have as you experiment with tastes and flavors, so you know which ones are the best to seek out in the future.

Here are a few other pictures that Michael took of these fellows:

This one had a cap color that was more of an almost greenish tan, or a light brown with a green hue. Most of the ones I picked were this color. If you click on the photo and zoom in you can see the net-like reticulation on the stem. This is important to know because most of the choice edible boletes have this characteristic.

Going back to cap color, several of them, mainly the younger ones, like this prime button had a more yellowish tan color. I also picked a couple that had a dark brown cap, but all reacted the same with the ammonia. Also as you can clearly see the stem was white. The flesh and pores were as white as the stem and it did not bruise any color nor were there any signs of bruising around worm holes and damaged areas of flesh.

Chanterelles - Up and Coming

Well as you can tell from my total lack of posts, I have been busy doing other things and have not been out hunting for fungal morsels just yet. Part of this is because of the hectic nature of my work and home life, but it is mainly because everything and the chanterelles especially, seem to be behind a little bit this season.

This certainly was the case at last weekend's foray in Ha Ha Tonka State Park. The last two year's the group had found between 150 to over 300 species, but this year we barely broke 50 and most was wood loving species which are still prevalent in dry weather.

Now I reckon things have picked up down there in the last 10 days as they have gotten a nice progression of rain, so I will probably check it out later this week.

In the meantime, many local hunters around Columbia have begun sending me reports of finding small buttons, so it will soon be on full force around Mid-MO if it isn't already. You can expect more posts and photos in the coming weeks. The photo above was taken by Michael R. of Fulton, who was out hunting today and, in addition to chanterelles, reported finding something that sounded an awful lot like a bolete that was a close relative to the King. Hopefully, I'll know more on that soon.

So if you have been waiting for chants you can start to satisfy your desires. They are small but the buttons are always the best (NO BUGS) and worth the extra effort to have them in hand.

Photo by Mycologista of Columbia

Ha Ha Tonka Foray

OK so maybe this post is partially to prove CS (camoshroomer) wrong in his prediction, but more importantly, a great mushroom foray snuck up on me or I would have mentioned it before now.

If you want to find some trumpets and maybe even a few chants among other fungal things, do check out the Missouri Mycological Society Foray this weekend in Mid-MO at Ha-Ha-Tonka State Park near Camdenton. Lots of great fun, food, libations, and a great way to learn more about mushrooms for the more experienced folks. Find the group camping site and you will find us. Someone should be there from Friday afternoon through about Sunday mid-day. Most people clear off by then.

Hope to have some good photos of finds when I get back. Lots of nice rain this week, so something should be up and going. Hope to see you there. Happy hunting.

2010 Morel FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

First and foremost I must answer this question, since it is on most people's minds...

Is the season over in Missouri?

My short and simple answer is yes and no. OK, maybe that is not simple. I'll explain what I mean.

The days of motherlode hauls are most likely over. Now, I am not saying that you can't find an area no one has hunted yet and come across a haul of huge yellows. That is still probable, but with all the hunters that have hit the woods, it is less likely. This is why I don't go out anymore. I concentrate my hunting during the prime of the season to hit those motherlode days, so I don't have to spend hours and miles looking for a few good yellows at the end of the season. That is how I can resist not being out in the woods. I have picked my share and have my coffers filled for the year. Now it is time to get back to work and all of the stuff I have put off the last few weeks.

A tip for those trying to put morels out of their mind. Go where they are not. Right now I am in Orlando Florida. absolutely no chance of finding a morel here. No one has ever found a morel in Florida. It is the only one of the 50 states that has no reports of morels. Not that I am not tempted try to be the first one to do so. But it is too late for that and I'll have to save that for next March.

I explained my yes answer, but let me talk about the no. If you still want to find some or didn't get your fill, don't give up hope just yet. Just look in the deepest and darkest parts of the woods, down in those deep ravines and through the thick underbrush. Basically, anywhere that doesn't see the light of day too much. Don't expect to find much, but you can still get a good meal if you put in the time.

Keep in mind that some (maybe even most) will be rotten and no good but push past that and keep looking. There is still hope. I have actually seen a photo from a very reliable source (a non-morel hunter and co-worker) who found three morels the first week of June when they moved a 20 foot brush pile. Underneath it all down in the darkness, three morels had grown IN JUNE. That was in southern Boone county. Even the MO conservation department says that can be found that late. They are just hard to see among the monster undergrowth that takes over in May.

Why was it such a screwy year?

Two words, the weather. The spring started off good with lots of rain, but by the time ground temps picked up, the rain had ceased and only the moisture rich bottoms really flushed. And even they weren't wet enough to flush like they usually do. So the usual suspect trees, especially sugar maples, who have been reliant for years went dormant.

Before I continue let me say that once again this is all just my own speculation from my observations and so this is just my opinion. Also note that I mainly stick to the bottoms in the spring, and haven't really walked the hills for the last 7 years. I broke an ankle at that time and had to have a few surgeries and boy does it hurt when I try to walk the hills for a few hours. So with all that being said, here is my own hypothesis about the hills.

In the past it seemed that the hills flush usually 5 to 10 days later than the bottoms. This year we had pretty good rain and moisture at the end of March and the bottoms flushed a little later than normal due to cooler temps (though just three days later). When the hills came really due to flush the second week of April, we had windy dry weather, where it topped 85 around Columbia for 7 straight days. Places in the hills that couldn't retain moisture, dried up and didn't flush. The bottoms produced OK once you figured out that maples were not producing and the morels were mainly to be found around cottonwoods. By the time the rain did finally come and things cooled down a bit, I think ground temps had risen too much to encourage any additional flushes in the Mid-MO area. The bottoms always do fairly well in dry years because they hold a lot of moisture even after two weeks of no rain.

And for those who don't think they pop early, I bet you missed out this year, because I was started picking on April 4, which was only three days later than the previous three years.

That's my short answer at least. I would love for some of you hill hunters to let me know you're own experiences this year to see if they support my guesstimation. For example, were the ones you found in places where the soil held moisture or did that not matter? Did you find more in the valleys, on the slopes, or on the ridges? and if on the slopes, where did you generally find more, near the top, the middle, or the bottom? Any input would be much appreciated. Morels are so complex of an organism that I doubt there is anyway one person could figure them out so we need to pool some general information to, as they would say in the research world "triangulate our data" and figure these little buggers out.

What is your favorite mushroom to eat and hunt?

Someone just asked this in the comments section of a post but for those of you who missed it. I thought I would answer it here. By far my favorite mushroom to hunt is the morel. It's elusive nature from year to year, the way it blends into its environment, the fact that it is the first yummy edible mushroom to appear after a long cold winter, and all the dang competition, make it the trophy mushroom for hunters. I doubt you will ever see hunters more proud when they are showing off a nice mess of morels they just found. And the rush you get when you stumble on a patch of morels does not compare with any other mushroom. Although a giant hen of the woods or chicken mushroom can come awfully close.

That being said, my favorite mushroom to eat is much different. I mention one in comment, the chanterelles, specifically the black trumpet. I can never get enough of them and their texture is so unlike any other mushroom when fresh. A chewy crispness when cooked properly, much like their cousins but they are more ephemeral and also one hard mushroom to find unless they are growing in abundance which they often do. After all, the common name wouldn't be horn of plenty for no reason.

However, a very close tie is the harder to find sweet tooth or hedge hog mushroom. It is not really fair to compare them with other mushrooms, because they cook completely different. Whereas most mushrooms being made largely of water shrink due to a loss of liquid during cooking, sweet tooth do the exact opposite. They actually absorb liquid and thus absorb the flavors of whatever you are cooking them with. This is very unique and when paired properly can lead to some amazingly deep and rich flavors from a mushroom. I would highly recommend trying these guys if you happen to come across them in the summer or fall.

And if you have any other questions please leave them in a comment or send me an email. I promise to answer each one personally and some may be good as a follow up to this FAQ post.

(photo of poor morel taken by camoshroomer as he mourned the passing of the season)