Foraging for Wild Mushrooms

[Ken]

Here's a good site for info and pictures entitled Morels, Truffles and other Spring Mushrooms :

http://academic.evergreen.edu/projec.../mtsm/mtsm.htm

[dougz]

An extra $15???!!!

Worth risking my life, then...

[Rick]

Doug - No one is suggesting you risk your life. Quit the opposite. Every post on mushrooms carries the disclaimer that you should be absolutely certain of ANY wild food before consuming it. You would be hard pressed to mistake a true moral and there is little in this world that tastes any better. Mmmmmmm.

[dougz]

Doug - No one is suggesting you risk your life.

Nope, I wasn't suggesting anyone WAS trying to convince me to give mushroom-picking a try..

This thread is for mushroom pickers, I get it..

I was just trying to get across before that there ARE no absolutes..

Even experts make mistakes, to their peril..

Not worth it, to me anyways.. And I just wanted to get my 2 cents in, maybe save a life..

[laughingbeetle]

Thanks for the post, Ken. I added it to my favorites.

[Sarge47]

Ok, 1st, whatever happened to "offgridbrandon"? Did he & YouthPastor form an unholy relationship & run off together?

2nd, doug Z, ignore Rick! You are 100% right! Morels are a deadly form of Narcotic & can lead to chronic belching during the late evening hours. They must be picked quickly & disposed of. During the "Morel season" you must go out and pick any you find & ship them to me as I am a trained professional! True, a professional Bus Driver but I am trained! I & I alone know the proper way of disposing of them. I use my kitchen, a hot, cast-iron skillet with some garlic butter over medium low heat, a flour mixture to dredge the deadly little boogers in...

[dougz]

I remember when I went mushroom picking with my cousin in Ukraine..

He showed me exactly which kinds to pick..

In 3 hours he had picked about a duffel bag full..

I had picked about 6..

1 of which turned out to be full of worms, and another 4 that were actually poisonous, AND full of worms..

Got bitten to **** by mosquitoes in the bargain..

Screw that noise.. >:(

[canid]

P. semilanceata aren't nasty, some people just have no taste

the appearent blewit is beautiful, but i don't usualy see such persistent purple in the cap or gills in mature specimens. other possibilities are also Cortinarius [unlikely] or Laccaria [also less likely due to size]. spore printing of course sorts that out: cream/light tan for Lepista, white for Laccaria amethistina and rusty brown for Corts.

i get some awesome feild blewits here near my house, and the full sized L. nuda proper over at bidwell park.

[Sarge47]

Sarge's Mushroom edibility test. Find a bunch of questionable mushrooms. Bread & fry. Serve them to someone you know & perhaps don't like very well; tell that person it's "chicken". Watch said person for 1 week, if no demonstratable medical problems or death occurs, mushrooms are safe to eat. If victim dies then write sympathy card to family!

[crashdive123]

Note to self...if Sarge sends any breaded, fried mushrooms to the Quality Control Department give them to Mikey. Afterall, he'll eat anything.

[canid]

some of them are poisonous, the ones with the bulbs on the ends.those are Aminitas, the orange cap and bulb is agricus aminita(fly agaric) however the chantrelle, the king bolete, the blewit, the coral,the hedge hog,and the orange jelly in this picture are all good, just be careful. the only edible Aminita is the cesar Aminita, which was not in the picture.

first of all; A. caesarea is not the only edible Amanita, there are quite a few edible species in the genus, including the above mentioned species, A. calyptrata, A. velosa, A. pachycolea and several others.

second; the fly agarics are not in the 'agaricus family', the are in the family Amanitaceae, Genus Amanita, and comprise the section Amanita. the members of this section [if properly identified] while having phychoactive effects from a range of related toxins, tend to be tasty, and can be safely rendered edible if prepared properly by parboiling, sliced or chopped in a change of water before cooking, as these toxins are strongly polar soluable. this method is not safe or the deadly toxic Amanitas, nor for members of other genera with various other dangerous toxins and is not generally recommended even in the appropriate cases by most.

the word agaric in itself means only a gilled mushroom of the order Agaricales. this order contains many families not greatly related to eachother, and these families each contain a varrying number of Genera somewhat more closely related to eachother.

Agaricus is the name only of a Genus in the order Agaricales, family Agaricaceae. the genus Agaricus is that which contains the white button mushrooms, crimini/portabello, the prince agaric [A. augustus] and dozens of other species, both edible and toxic, and many which are edible to some but are associated with a variety of allergic like reactions and can only be safely eaten by some people.

as a disclaimer; no Amanita should be eaten by those not well versed in the genus, and no person should try to render a toxic mushroom edible except in a few specific cases and here they know the nature of the toxins concerend and there is an established history of such safe treatment. no person who does not know what they are talking about should ever give mushroom identification advice to another person, unless it is advice to be cautious.

[edr730]

Picking morels is a tourist attraction here. There are plenty of brochures and articles in newspapers for those who need it. Here it starts around May 15th and mothers day is often a good weekend to go. The mushrooms come in much better if there is good rain followed by warm weather. There's the black, white and brain morel. There's a little one that does not connect at the bottom and people are cautioned not to eat it, but I have many times and realized what I was eating. I do know of one person that ate a large quantity of the morel that was not connected at the bottom (like an umbrella) and he got sick for a day from it. That was the only kind he ate and they ate panfuls of them. That's about the worst I ever heard of. Morels look totally different from other mushrooms, like a sponge. We always dry them and use them throughout the year. People claim they are the best in the world. I just know I like them much more than any mushroom I've ever ate from the store.

[canid]

yeah, the false morels can be quite dangerous and still they are commonly eaten by a bold few.

the concentrations of hydrazines vary substantially from species to species within the Genera Gyromitra and Helvella, but also from collection to collection of a given species. often they are low enough that the mushrooms can be eaten without ill effect after light cooking, and occasionally, are so high that a person cooking them can drop dead just from the MMH fumes comming off of the pan.

at the Rainbow Family National Gathering several years ago [when it was hosted in northern califronia near Alturas] it is reported that a man was collecting Gyromitra mushrooms, cooking and serving them to people and several where poisoned.

[edr730]

In that case, I will stick to the true morel, or the whites and the blacks. They are the most abundant anyhow. Just in case. The brain mushroom doesn't have as distinct of a flavor anyway and are harder to find here. But some people really like them. ( they are giant ones that don't have a true sponge look, they look like a brain that has been stomped on, they also crumble easy). The umbrella ones don't have as much meat and are mostly stem and I haven't ate them since my friend got sick. But, we always kept them before. Thanks Candid, for the info.

[canid]

i hear you. i brought home some Helvella crispa the other day, but i doubt i'll eat them no matter how well cooked they are.

while still fresh, one specimen i put a flame to crackled and sputtered as the volatiles burned off noticeably. that's got to be a significant amount of hydrazines.

[edr730]

Gyromitra esculenta around here is what we call the brain mushroom. According to the picture I found. I didn't recognize the white one you took home (according to a picture). We only collect mushrooms in the spring since I don't know of other mushrooms that can be so easily harvested and put up like the morel. And few people collect much else. I've been given a couple puff balls, but the flavor was bland in comparison. Some people collect was is called hen and chicks, but we never have. There should be a good morel mushroom crop everywhere if the weather stays moist and it doesn't stay too cold. I usually look at the calendar and feel what the temperature is like. You take your flannel shirt off when walking and looking for mushrooms in the middle of prime season...about that warm, but a bit cooler early season. I know the date changes depending on where someone is from. Around here the blacks come out when the minnows run in the creeks more or less. I've heard some people say when the oak leaves are as big as a mouse's ear.

[canid]

the H. crispa grows somewhat prolifically under oak in the spring here.

the morels, which aren't prolific down here in the valley fruit sporadically whenever it is cold and has been raining, but not freezing at night. at higher elevations they fruit in large numbers, as soon as the freezes are over in spring. there they like mixed woods of oak, Pinus radiata and fir. a good indicator for them there is when the montane irises begin to bloom.

[canid]

hens and chicks sounds like possibly chicken of the woods [Laetiporus sulphureus and satalite species, also called the sulfur shelf] or hen of the woods [Grifola frondosa or some such, i'm not experienced with them]. common names are a pain in the six unless everybody could agree to use the same ones. the only reason i prefer the often combersome binomial names.

[laughing beetle]

I think you may be right Canid. Hens and Chickens as I know them in the NorthEast are perrenial, slow growing, ground covering plants. They aren't mushrooms or lichen. Kind of a cold weather cactus, I guess. They are classed as succulents in the nurseries up here. They do grow well in the crappiest dead dirt. But they have no use beyond ornamentation, that I know of.

[canid]

that's allright, the only hens and chicks i know of by that name are a cultivar of Papaver somniferum.