Green Stain Cup

Jessie and I were watching The Simpsons the other night, and during one of the scenes there were some mushrooms growing in the background. She asked me what kind they were. They were just a typically mushroom shape, but were bright green, so this is the closest I could come up with. The Green Stain Cup (Chlorociboria aeruginascens) is a flat to cup shaped mushroom, with a cap that is green to blue green. It grows in dead or dying oak or hazel trees. What makes this mushroom notable (and gives it its name) is the fact that it produced a greenish stain in the wood, which some people call "green oak". Never having seen one, I'd like to get a chance to see both the color of these as well as the green-stained wood they produce.

Destroying Angel

There are three mushrooms that I want to find in the new year, the Fly Amanita and the two notable toxic mushrooms, the Destroying Angel and the Death Cap. The Destroying Angel (Amanita virosa), besides having one of the coolest names of any fungus, is one of the two musrooms responsible for nearly all mushroom-related fatalities in the United States. The primary reason for the number of fatalities tied to this mushroom is that there are several varieties of edible mushrooms that look similar to it, and people who are careless don't take the time to properly identify it.

The Destroying Angel has several features that distinguish it from other mushrooms, regardless of appearance. The most important is the presence of a saclike volva, usually buried underneath the soil. It is this feature that identifies it as a member of the Amanita family, and therefore to be avoided. It is white to ivory colored, with crowded gills and a bell-shaped or conical cap. What differentiates this from other Amanita species is that the ring is often indistinct to not present.

Red Hot Milky

I chose this one strictly because I like the name. It sounds like the name of a trendy new cocktail. Lactarius rufus is actually a tan-ish, mostly flat capped mushroom with attached gills, purplish flesh and an acrid smell. Like some Russulas, the flesh seems mild at first, becoming extremely hot in a few moments. This mushroom is apparently quite common throughout North America, though I don't recall having seen one. I suppose this means I'll have to post about the Dirty Milky at some point.

Western Woodland Amanita

I decided to choose a random mushroom today, and I landed on the Western Woodland Amanita (Amanita silvicola). This mushroom is in the Amanita family, which is notable for containing the two mushrooms that are the culprit in nearly every mushroom-related fatality in the United States. This one, however, is not poisonous. Which is a good thing, since it doesn't have the ring or cup that are associated with Amanitas, which might make it difficult to identify. It is quite pretty, however, with a striking white cap and a wide, sloping stem. I'm looking forward to see many more Amanitas than I did last year, when I got started too late, and most of them had rotted away.

White Matsutake

Jessie and I went out to the Oregon coast several months ago, and since we were going to have some time to kill, I brought along my mushroom books in case I had time to do any foraging. When most people went off to eat squeaky cheese in Tillamook, I went off to look for mushrooms.

I found a pretty wide variety, including some bolletes and agaricus species. I was heading back from my walk when I spotted some generic looking white mushrooms underneath a conifer tree. I had to dig them out from the loose dirt to get a look at them. They were fairly large, with white flesh, crowded gills and a prominent ring. I was excited, because I thought I might have found some Destroying Angels, which I've always wanted to find. I went back to the house to identify them, and realized that I could identify all of them except the white ones. To get the mushroom out from the soil, I had cut them off halfway up the stem, which meant that I couldn't tell if they had a volva, or sac-like base. So I went back, dug out the rest, and managed to find three more.

It turns out, they were not Destroying Angels, but White Matsutakes (Tricholoma magnivelare). I was able to identify them because they had no volva (which the Destroying Angel has) and a very prominent ring (which the D.A. does not). Most of all, the White Matsutake has an unforgettable odor, which smells almost exactly like cinnamon life savers. We sliced them thin, grilled them, and topped with a little salt and olive oil. They were amazing, with an almost truffle like perfume. They are the edible mushroom I am most looking forward to this year.

Coral Tooth

Today's mushroom is another one of the edibles Jessie and I found on our first mushroom hike. It was getting toward the end of the hike and we had already picked a basket full of interesting mushrooms. Then, someone found a large, white coral reef-looking thing on the side of a large dead tree. I'd seen these before, but it had never occurred to me that they were anything interesting. Our guide told us it was the Coral Tooth (Hericium coralloides), and was great to eat. Jessie was intrigued, and set out to find one. She found one after only a few minutes of looking. It is a yellowish to white fungus, with teeth that point downward, much like the Hedgehog. I thought that it tasted like crab meat, and although it was a challenge to clean, it's one of the mushrooms I'm looking forward to collecting this fall.

Hedgehog

One of the first edible (and by edible I mean actually edible and not one that will make you sick) that I gathered was the Hedgehog. There are several different kinds of hedgehogs, but the one that I found is Hudnum Umbilicatum. The most notable feature about this mushroom is the presence of spines, rather than gills, on the underside of the cap. These 'teeth' are extremely recognizable and make this mushroom hard to mistake for anything else, a nice feature when looking at edible mushrooms.

Toxic Yellowing Agaricus

The Toxic Yellowing Agaricus is a member of the Agaricus family of mushrooms, all of which are cap and stem mushrooms with a stem ring. A stem ring is the remnant of the partial veil of the mushroom that, after having come up from under the ground, stays attached to the stem. This mushroom is found in grassy areas, parks and anyplace where there is a good deal of moisture and/or rotting plant material.

This mushroom, along with several others, are called by David Arora "the lose your lunch bunch". They are toxic, but not dangerously so. They cause moderate to severe 'gastrointestinal distress'. The reason I chose this one is that this mushroom is a case study in why amateurs should not eat mushrooms unless they are 100% sure of the identification. We found these in, of all places, our front yard. I looked up the mushroom, assumed I checked all the characteristics, and pronounced, with great satisfaction, that we had a Woods Agaricus (Agaricus sylvicola), a good eating mushroom.

Long story short, we ate a few, with Jessie eating the most. Short story very short, Jessie got sick and I didn't. Moral of the Story: Don't eat mushrooms unless you are 1000% certain of the ID.

Rosy Russula

The first (and only time) I've been on a guided mushroom hike, I expected to hike around for hours, hunched over, vainly trying to find an interesting mushroom or two. Instead, we got out of the car, started walking to the trail head, and right there, along the side of the road, was a bright red mushroom. I was excited, so I brought it to our guide, who proceeded to manhandle it to pieces. Luckily, I would find out that they are very common, at least where we were. I got over my disappointment.

The Rosy Firm Russula (Russula rosea), like all russulas, have flesh that crumbles when you break it, instead of being stringy, like most others. It's pretty short, has a convex to flattish cap and medium spaced, brittle gills. But its the red color and the crumbly flesh make this a pretty easy mushroom to identify. You can also tell it's not one of the other red russulas by the fact that it doesn't have a peppery hot taste, but that's for another day. Enjoy!

Straw-colored Fiber Head

The goal of this journal is to learn more about the mushrooms of the Pacific NW. To do this, I am going to choose one mushroom a day to learn at least a few things about. So here we go.

The first mushroom of the day (heretofore referred to as the M.O.T.D.) is the Straw Colored Fiber Head (Inocybe fastigiata). It might seem to be a fairly innocuous mushroom to begin with. It is a fairly widespread Inocybe, a member of the Cortinarious family, itself the largest family of brown spored gilled mushrooms. I chose this because while talking with Jessie about this project, she asked me which mushroom I was going to start with. She thought it would be funny if I chose this one. Not because of any particular beauty or feature associated with it, but because, like many Inocybes, it has a very specific odor. That odor being "spermatic". So there you go. I'm hoping that future entries will be slightly more illuminating.