Hunt for Wild Mushrooms

Image Gallery Shaggy Mane

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Mothers Nature

You’ll find me, on any given day when I can get away, stalking the deep woods, stumbling down soggy banks into dark streambeds, peering into hollow moss-covered logs, craning my neck toward the highest branches of dying trees, dropping to my knees to sift through leaf litter, rising and walking in one direction, then another, crisscrossing, circling, crisscrossing again, with no apparent aim. Seeing me, only a fellow mycophile would know that I am neither drunk nor addled nor lost, but simply following my obsession. I am hunting for mushrooms.

My fascination for fungi started because wherever I walked in the woods, there they were — big ones, little ones, flat ones, conical ones; red, white, brown, orange; speckled, smooth, ragged, ruffled — poking up out of leaf litter, jutting from tree trunks, standing singly on the ground like lone sentinels, huddled in little groups like close-lipped conspirators.

The trouble was, I had no idea beyond the word mushroom just what they were. What was that lovely ivory one with the lacy collar? How about those purplish pixie parasols? Those wrinkled rust-hued vases?

In the face of such frequent reminders, I could ignore my ignorance for only so long. On every hike, I could almost hear them taunting me: You don’t know anything about us. Not even our names.

Well, OK, we’ll just see about that.

Armed with field guides, I set about learning how to put mushrooms in their places, taxonomically speaking. Soon I could distinguish broad families — the fringed-tooth mushrooms, the spongy-bottomed boletes, the self-describing coral fungi, the puffballs blowing spore smoke. I also began mentally sorting the baffling variety of gilled mushrooms into manageable categories: the bulb-footed amanitas, the dunce-hatted inky caps, the colorfully capped russulas, the shell-shaped oysters.

Meanwhile, of course, I was mentally evaluating every fungus I found for its potential place in either of two especially noteworthy groups: the edibles and the killers. Never mind whether you’re a foraging gourmand or just looking, part of every wild mushroom’s mystique is the question: Which group is it? The answer in most cases is neither; not particularly edible, not particularly poisonous, but somewhere in between. The majority of mushrooms are harmless, but also bland or distasteful or otherwise unappetizing. Some others will make you sick or send you into hallucinations. About a dozen can kill you. Dozens more are safe and delicious.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print