Fav Fall Fungi Fotos

A few mushroom photos to share with you today. These are the ones I found most joyous to stumbled upon in my local adventures this fall. The group contains a mix of maritime edibles and medicinals.

Pleurotus dryinus

Pleurotus ostreatus

Hericium americanum

King Bolete

Suillus glandulosus & Gomphidius glutinosus ( remove cap cuticle before cooking)

Birch Polypore

Chaga & selfie

Long live impermanence, a phrase made popular by thich nhat hanh and very effectively emphasized by seeing my fungi friends today, this was running through my thoughtscape on the drive home and yes we wouldn’t get to enjoy anything in this life if we were not living in this constant state of change. Many of my fellow wild food foragers are very aware there is much more to this activity then just gathering things to consume, happy trails.🦉

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Skunk Cabbage patch

Here is Symplocarpus foetidus, the Skunk Cabbage with its unique spathe and visible small flowers on the spadix, you can also see some tightly curled green leaves new on the scene. I have very little experience with the edibility of Skunk Cabbage as I vaguely recall drying a few stinky leaves over a very long time to use powdered around 30 years ago. Since I now have a wild flower page on the blog I have an excellent reason to show a few photos of these most striking plants. Here the leaves are opening up a bit more. To eat Skunk Cabbage you need to do your homework as the calcium oxalate crystals found within the plant are nothing to sneeze at, lets keep our foraged foods as painless to mouth and other bodily channels as possible. A good look at a few leaves, these usually are between 1 to 2 ft long. Another angle at the spathe. and now for a look at a slice of the Skunk Cabbage patch. I’m at the eastern most tip on N.B today and you will probably need to travel in NB a 100 plus miles SW to find another patch or even a few other Skunk Cabbages as they are kind of rare in the Maritimes provinces. ciao

That fluffy light feeling

The first snow landed gently last evening.

Even the smaller branches will withstand snow of this nature.

This morning the feelings is still here in the freshness of the obvious change.

Another morning view and now as I write these words the snow has already left all the branches in the photos.

Moving on in more of a wintergreen direction, a look at the largest Teaberry I’ve ever seen. ciao

Welcome to our world

Here are a few not so foragery photos for you tonight. It was a cold one with a -11 Celsius wind chill and 40 km breeze, nevertheless some rosehips and mushrooms found their way into the basket. You may want to click on the photos for a closer look, this first one especially has a lot going on.

You knew I’d find a way to slide a mushroom into this post somewhere. ciao

Fall Jack Pine understory

Huckleberries plants now with red leaves makes it real easy to also notice the blue to black fruit.

Huckleberries really show their numbers in this Jack Pine forest come fall, click on the photo to see the numerous berries.

Hucks and Matsutakes.

Here we see our largest Maritime woodpecker who climbs backwards down the tree trunk to get low enough to reach back for some berries. These plants are usually waist high on humans so this is the easiest way for them to pick yet they really stretch their necks to get it done.

This Pileated Woodpecker (click on my cybershot photo my friends) seems to be on the same visiting schedule as me as we met here last week in the evening. This one chooses to stay around 100 feet from me and circles around me for 10 minutes or so. You may have noticed there has been a clearcut on both sides of this 200 foot strip of Jack Pine so many of the fruiting plants, matsutake, birds and all the rest are dealing with the changes. ciao

Coloring the Maritime forest

Let us start with the Blusher (Amanita amerirubescens), I’m not pushing this mushroom as an edible though, it is in the post like all the other photos today for looks only.

Hydnellum peckii is quite a sight as it gradually dyes itself from white to reddish.

First Lobster mushrooms I’ve seen this summer, they did a nice job taking over these once white Russula mushrooms

Here is a series of 5 photos of Leccinum aurantiacum, the last 3 of the cut stem as it moves from white, pink, purple and black in just a few minutes after slicing.

The mighty tiny Laccaria amethystina plentiful in moss right now.

Watermelon berry, I wasn’t expecting to see this plant today and this was the only one in the area I noticed.

American Fly Honeysuckle looking good.

Well that’s it for now. ciao

Seeing signs of mushrooms

Here is a fallen hardwood trunk nicely covered with Oyster mushrooms in prime shape for eating, also on this trunk were 3 Ganoderma applanatum fungi, aka (Artist Conk) so I wrote on 1 of these and will bring it home as well to dry and later use as a tea ingredient due to having similar medicinal properities as its close relative the Reishi mushroom.

Some more young Oyster mushrooms.

The Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) grows quite big here in eastern Canada with the largest ones in the photo measuring over 9 inches across the cap. Looks like a deer has nibbled on the mushroom in the middle of this group as they were around 4 feet of the ground. These larger Oyster mushrooms I like to dry and then powder to be used in medicinal teas or other foods like soups and baked goods.

More mushrooms and some fall colours for your enjoyment. ciao

Mushroom forest floor show

Here are a few eye catching mushrooms from a New Brunswick forest of eastern white pine and beech trees. Click on the photos to see nature’s amazing art.

First time I’ve seen this poisonous Amanita

Probably Amanita atkinsoniana or onusta, both are toxic

These Irregular Earth Tongue were pretty colorful

Irregular Earth Tongue, plentiful under the pines

Angel Wings (no longer considered a safe edible)

Angel Wings (There were reports from Asia on deaths related to eating this mushroom in recent years)

Ciao for now

Suillus cavipes

Usually for the last 20 years I have only used Suillus species in dried form for adding a beefiness to soups and sauces. An interesting mushroom with their felty caps and hollow stems deer can’t resist biting of the caps and leaving the stems still standing.

This one in the photo has a blonde cap which was a surprise as the cap is usually dark brown like the stem.

A couple photos of the fully expanded mushroom’s top and under side views.

I couldn’t recall the flavour of this mushroom when fresh so I decided to cook it with a little salt in its own juices to taste the true flavour of this fall mushroom which only grows under Larch trees. On its own the flavour was quite good with a hint of lemon. If you prepare this mushroom in the usually way we cook button mushrooms you will find it becomes to mushy to be appetizing and this is largely the reason why many Suillus are not considered good edibles south of Finland. The only thing holding Suillus cavipes from being a poplar edible mushroom especially here in the east coast of Canada where it is very common is a chef’s proper attention to this mushroom’s true potential. ciao

Not very Poultry mushrooms

This is no chicken little. This is the east coast conifer version of (Chicken of the woods) Laetiporos huroniensis which I happen to notice on a big old eastern hemlock around a 100 feet up a steep bank on trail 2 at the foray.

(Ma i take) a step back now to – who came first the chicken or the hen – and the truth is  on the way down to the 2013 N.S. Mycological Society Foray I decided to take a short detour over to a side road in Hants Co. N.S. to see if the red oak that gave me 3 nice (hen of woods) after last year’s Foray was going to be generous again. There wasn’t 3 this time though 1 huge Hen of the woods (Grifola frondosa) was all my basket could handle.

Check out the info and especially the story at the bottom of this mushroom–collecting.com/mushroommaitake.

Now back to this conifer chicken of the woods Laetiporos huroniensis, it is considered by a few people a good edible though 10% or more of the population may experience some GI problems after eating this one.  That is a high percentage so it seems good advise to only gather chicken of the woods of hardwoods which will make your mushroom either Laetiporus sulphurous or Laetiporus cincinnatus in New England and Eastern Canada at least, there are a few other varieties out west which seem to be studied a little more than our east coasters. Well time to fly the coop. ciao