LOOK FOR: Turkey Tails

Photo credit: Coastlander

As we think about the things that we are thankful for in nature, we should all pause to be thankful for mushrooms. Not just because they are yummy, or beautiful -- which many are -- but because they enable us to walk around in the woods in the first place.

After all, imagine a world where every tree that fell over in the forest just stayed there. A few hundred years and it would be an impassible maze of giant Pick-Up Sticks.

No, we should be grateful for the saprobes -- those thankless little mushrooms that eat wood. And what better to single out at Thanksgiving time than the turkey tail? This very common shelf mushroom typically grows on (and eats) logs and stumps, clearing the way for future generations of trees and hikers.

Turkey tails grow in overlapping, semi-circular layers that really can look like the back end of a turkey. The effect is enhanced by stripes of various colors in the grey-to-brown (sometimes to orange) spectrum. (These stripes are the source of the name Trametes versicolor -- thin and multi-colored). The surface is often velvety when fresh. All in all, they're a lovely mushroom -- and all the more eye catching at this time of year when colors are fading in the woods.

Photo credit: lfelliott

Chinese medicine has used turkey tails for centuries, and Western scientists are now studying extracts as cancer treatments. Perhaps one more reason to be thankful for the turkey tail.

In the wild: Turkey tail is extremely common in the woods. There are other common shelf mushrooms that can look very similar to the "true" turkey tail; chief among them is Stereum ostrea, the "false" turkey tail. If you want to get into the nitty-gritty, try Michael Kuo's key.

In your yard: You can order a turkey tail growing kit from Fungi Perfecti. (But, did we mention how common they are?)

Photo credit: Cornell Fungi

Trip Report: Mushrooms

Last Saturday Matt led a mushrooming 101 class. While the fungi are slowing down compared to the incredible abundance of a month ago, there's still plenty to look at.

On the way to the park, we found two prized medicinal mushrooms: reishi and hen-of-the-woods. Growing right along the side of the road on the base of an oak tree in the neighborhood.

With the park we found good examples of most of the broad classifications of mushrooms you'll see: gilled cap-and-stalk mushrooms, boletes (cap-and-stalk mushrooms with pores instead of gills), shelf or polypore mushrooms, and even some coral mushrooms. We saw some fantastic examples of how mushrooms spread their mycelium through the vertical tube structure of wood. And we looked at the colored spores they drop to reproduce.

At one point someone said to me, "You can walk through the woods and it's just beautiful, but there are so many things to see if you stop and look!" Indeed.

Reishi (Ganoderma) and hen of the woods (Grifola frondosa)

Looking for the beetles we always see in oyster mushrooms.

Unidentified cap-and-stalk mushroom with gills

Miscellaneous polypores

Puffballs (Lycoperdon sp.?)

Very young oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus)

Coral mushroom

Maze-gilled polypore (Daedaleopsis confragosa)

LOOK FOR: Lichens

As the leaves disappear from the trees and many other plants die back to the ground, many lichens will remain in their glorious diversity, bringing color to the forest even in the winter. Science Friday recently produced this charming video that will get you started in the wide world of lichenology.

LOOK FOR: Jack O'Lantern Mushrooms

The jack o'lantern mushroom (Omphalotus olearius) is a poisonous orange mushroom that glows in the dark. We've found it twice in the last two weeks -- perfect for the lead up to Halloween!

Photo credit: plussed

When they're fresh, jack o'lantern mushrooms are a bright orange, enough to catch your eye from far away in the woods, like chicken of the woods. Unlike chicken of the woods, which grows in shelf-like clusters, these mushrooms have a cap on a stalk. Jack o'lanterns also have gills on the undersides, rather than pores. They grow in clusters, and each individual cap and stalk can be up to 8 inches tall and 8 inches across -- a pretty impressive sight.

But the truly cool thing about these mushrooms is that the gills glow in the dark. You need absolute darkness to see it, and they need to be in their prime (one source recommends wrapping them in moist paper towels to bring home).

Photo credit: amuderick

Just don't go trick-or-treating on these beauties. They may look and smell great, but they'll make you really, really sick.

Photo credit: pellaea

In the wild: We've found these mushrooms twice in Rock Creek Park (once on Oregon Avenue and once by Boundary Bridge), and also in Scott's Run.

LOOK FOR: Oyster Mushrooms

They're not as sexy as morels, nor as predictable, but oyster mushrooms -- Pleurotus ostreatus -- might just be my favorite wild mushroom. And I don't even like oysters.

Photo credit: The Natural Capital

We find oyster mushrooms spring through fall here in the DC area, but they are whitest (and therefore most eye-catching) in the spring and summer. They grow on dead or dying wood, usually on logs that still have their bark. Young caps are about 2 inches across but they can get as wide as 8 inches -- at which point they're a little rubbery for eating.

The stalks of oyster mushrooms are very short, and they don't come out of the middle of the caps. Instead, the stem is off to the side, allowing the mushrooms to grow in overlapping clusters. In fact, their genus name, Pleurotus, comes from the Greek word for side. (And I always thought it was related to the French word for rain!)

Oyster mushroom with fungus beetle by the Natural Capital

But one of the most distinguishing characteristics of oyster mushrooms is not a part of the mushroom itself -- it's a little black beetle that we absolutely always find between the gills. They're actually part of a group of beetles known as the Pleasing Fungus Beetles. Triplax lay their eggs on oyster mushrooms, and spend the rest of their lives hanging out among the gills and slowly eating them. They're harmless and easy enough to wash off, and a great identification aid.

Which is important, because there are other similar white mushrooms that grow on wood. They probably won't kill you, but they're supposed to taste awful. Luckily, oyster mushrooms are frequently available at farmers' markets and at high-end grocery stores. You can stop there, or you can use cultivated mushrooms to get a good sense of what they're like there before you go out looking for them (though the ones you see in the store will be relatively dried up after several days of storage, and some farmers select for more colorful strains). Your absolute best bet for safely identifying wild mushrooms is to out with experienced mushroomers, like the ones at the Mycological Association of Washington. (We sometimes find mushrooms on our wild food walks as well.)

Photo credit: Mr Snootyhamper

In the wild: Like many mushrooms, oysters like shade, and they clearly respond to rain -- you'll often see them a day or two after a good soaking. Keep an eye out when you pass downed logs. Once you do find some, they'll come back in the same location repeatedly.

In your yard (or apartment): Oyster mushrooms can be cultivated on many different substrates that contain cellulose -- not just logs but also shredded paper, coffee grounds, or sawdust. There are even kits using rolls of toilet paper as the base, designed to grow indoors. If you want to give it a try, check out the products at Field & Forest or Fungi Perfecti.

LOOK FOR: Morels, Closely Guarded Secret of the Forest

Photo credit: The Natural Capital

We first learned about morels about ten years ago, when someone told us that she had a spot where she went to pick them -- but she wouldn't tell us where it was. We soon learned that morels are delicious mushrooms that come up year after year in the same place. And the location of each patch is a secret as closely guarded as if there were pure gold sprouting up on the forest floor.

Hard to mistake for anything else, morels are a great beginner's mushroom. There's just one catch: morels are really, really hard to see. For years, we looked during the last two weeks of April in all the places people said to look: in old apple orchards, by dead elm stumps, and under tuliptrees. Nothing. Until we went out with experienced mushroomers who were willing to share their morel spots. Suddenly, the forest floor was dotted with these gourmet delicacies.

Photo credit: Jason Riedy

The pocked brown surface of morels is perfectly camouflaged to mix in with crumpled dead leaves. Several times, I've sat down to take a break while mushrooming, only to have my new perspective reveal a morel in the exact patch of ground where I was just looking. After finding a few, your brain forms a search image, and they start standing out a little more from the background. Until then, hunting for morels can be painfully frustrating. It's important to remember that even if you don't find anything, you're walking in the woods. And it's spring.

The earthy flavor of morels is like nothing else -- and their value among those of us who hunt mushrooms is heightened by the fact that they're the first mushroom of any note to come up after a long, mostly mushroomless winter. They usually start to emerge when the ground gets up to around 50 degrees -- around the time that the redbuds are blooming. Around DC they peak in mid to late April.

There are several species of morel that are most common in the DC metro area, listed here in approximate order of when they come up:

Photo credit: Jason Means

• Morchella semilibera (meaning semi-free) -- the bottom of the cap is not attached to the stem.
• Morchella elata (meaning erect or exalted) -- known as black morel, because the cap is blacker than in other species.
• Morchella esculenta (meaning edible) -- often called yellow morel; the cap color is beige to brown, but yellower than other species.
• Morchella crassipes (meaning big foot) -- much larger than the other species.
• Morchella deliciosa (meaning delicious) -- known as white morel because the ridges on the cap are whitish when young.

All five of these species are edible. But if you are going to try to eat morels that you collect yourself, you must learn what a poisonous "false morel" looks like. If you know what to look for, they're easy to tell from true morels. Most importantly, true morels are hollow, while false morels are cottony on the inside.

Photo credit: The Natural Capital

Go out with experienced mushroomers if you're just getting started. You'll be happy you did, not only for the help with identification, but also because they will generously take you to spots where they have found morels in the past. Look here for the Mycological Association of Washington's upcoming forays. Or sign up for Matt's wild edibles hike to Scott's Run on April 17, where we found dozens of morels last year.

But we're not going to tell you our favorite spot. Two years ago, at about this time, we found over 500 morels in one small patch of forest in the DC metropolitan area. This picture is your only clue of the location. The search is half the fun!

Have you found morels yet this spring? Let us know when you do! We checked our special spot on Wednesday and there was no sign of them yet, but they should be up soon.

In the wild: Look on the forest floor in stands of tuliptrees, especially under older trees. Keep looking. Go with someone who has found them before. Keep looking.

In your yard: There's a chance they might pop up if you have old elms or tulip poplars in your yard, but noone's figured out how to cultivate our east coast species. Until they do...keep looking.

LOOK FOR: Rock Tripe, Fungi That Have Discovered Agriculture

"No one truly knows the woods," argued illustrator and naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946), author of early Boy Scout handbooks, "until he can find with certainty a number of wild plants that furnish good food for man in the season when food is scarce; that is, in the winter or early spring."

Photo credit: Paul J. Morris

And Seton's favorite wild edible at this famine time of year? Rock tripe. Which tells you something about the availability of wild foods in winter. I've never eaten tripe (cow intestines), so I'll have to leave it to others to say whether it's an apt description. But I suspect this cardboardy lichen got its common name because it's pretty low on the food totem pole. Rock tripe, Seton wrote, "is not delicious food, nor is it highly nutritious, but it will sustain life, and every traveler should know what it is like and how to use it."

Rock tripe grows in ragged pieces that people describe as looking like lettuce leaves or dried orange peels. They can grow up to 8 inches across, but most are probably in the 2 to 4 inch range. Each piece is anchored to the rock at a small spot in the middle, giving the lichen its Latin name: Umbilicaria. The top can vary in color from brown to grey, and the underside is darker -- often black. You'll often see it growing in clusters, covering the surface of a large boulder. Keep an eye out when you're walking in a rocky place, like the parks along the Potomac.

To me, the most interesting thing about rock tripe is the fact that it is not actually one organism, but two. Lichens, as you may recall from biology class, consist of a fungus living in a symbiotic relationship with algae. Or, as lichenologist Trevor Goward puts it, "lichens are fungi that have discovered agriculture." The fungus provides a structure that retains water and captures minerals; the algae photosynthesizes to provide sugars that are also food for the fungus. Together, they can colonize areas where neither fungi nor algae would otherwise survive.

Photo credit: Paul J. Morris

Unlike most mushrooms and plants, lichens persist year-round. And, rock tripe has been shown to contain one-third more calories than equal amounts of honey or corn flakes. Perhaps this is why rock tripe has been eaten for centuries, at least as a survival food. The Cree apparently included it regularly in soups as a thickener; other Native American tribes used it as a food of last resort. And it was from the tribes that European settlers learned the value of this strange food. Washington's troops are said to have used it to help them survive the winter at Valley Forge.

Should you eat rock tripe? We've been known to nibble on a piece now and then, just because we can. We just break a small piece off and chew (and chew, and chew). Folks who've had more experience with the stuff say that if you're going to eat a lot, it's best to dry it, then boil it for about an hour, which will soften it up considerably.  As with all wild foods, check your identification and be sure of what you're working with. And, start with a small quantity until you have a sense of how your body is going to react.

Here's hoping you're never in a situation when you're eating rock tripe out of anything more than curiosity. 

LOOK FOR: Chicken of the Woods

Chicken of the woods is a great mushroom with a great name. The fungus forms overlapping orange fans that look a little like the tailfeathers of a chicken. And if you cook it and eat it (only after careful ID, please!) you may find the texture a lot like chicken, too.

Photo by the Natural Capital

Before the tree leaves start to change, there isn't much orange in the woods. So chicken of the woods (also known as sulfur shelf, or Laetiporus sulphureus, literally "bright-pored sulphur-yellow") can be eye-catching even from quite a distance. There are actually two varieties. One is bright orange on top, with bright sulphur-yellow underneath. It always grows on tree trunks (standing or fallen). The other is a paler orange on top, and nearly white on the underside. It often grows from tree roots. Both have tiny pores on the underside, rather than the gills you see on grocery store mushrooms.

Chicken of the woods is fairly difficult to confuse with other mushroom species once you know what you're looking for. Still, if you want to eat the mushrooms you find, we highly recommend a foray with the Mycological Association of Washington. If you can't make it out with the group, get yourself a couple of ID books to cross-check your identification. And, even once you're sure you've got the right fungus, start out by eating only a little bit and see how it sits with you. For a small percentage of people, chicken of the woods can cause stomach upset.

Photo credit: Matt Reinbold

In the wild: As the name suggests, look in the woods -- although we've seen a few specimens of the root-growing variety coming up in suburban yards, we've found far more of the tree-growing variety in the woods. If you find some, check back again next year in the same spot -- they can come back several years in a row.

In your yard: Although there are companies that sell mushroom kits, we haven't seen this species for sale yet. You'll just have to go for a walk in the woods!

LOOK FOR: Chantarelles

Chantarelles are a choice culinary mushroom prized by chefs around the world. And they grow in Washington, DC.

Photo credit: The Natural Capital

The most common chantarelle species in our area, Cantharellus cibarius, generally comes up in July; we've already found several this year. They are golden yellow to yellow-orange (but not pumpkin orange). The gills on the underside of the cap are very distinctive because they continue down the stem, and are not very deep -- it's almost like the mushroom has wrinkles, rather than the gills you'd see on a typical gilled mushroom. The smell is also distinctive -- sweet and fruity, like apricots (some guidebooks also suggest rose and pumpkin).

If you're not already a mushroomer, the safest and most productive way to look for wild mushrooms is to go with people who already know what they're doing. Luckily, we have in this area the Mycological Association of Washington, which organizes forays led by people who have an encyclopedic knowledge of our local fungi. They'll generally schedule hunting expeditions in areas where they've had luck in the past, and will identify any mushrooms found on the hike. You can also check out the foraging walks led by Matt's Habitats.

If you prefer to go on your own, please, please, please get ahold of a couple of mushroom id books and carefully check anything you pick before you eat it. Also, wild mushrooms should always be cooked before you eat them, and never eat anything that looks bug-ridden or rotten, no matter how tempting. For example, chanterelles often have very buggy stems -- cut that part out and just eat the healthy parts. Many cases of "mushroom" poisoning are actually attributable to eating mushrooms that are past their prime.

Photo credit: brocktopia

In the wild: We have seen chantarelles in both Rock Creek Park and Greenbelt Park, sometimes growing right in a trail. (Of course, we should remind you, it is illegal to remove mushrooms from a National Park.) If you find a good spot, check back every year -- the mycelium (something like fungus roots) stay in the same place and produce new fruits (the mushrooms) every year.

In your yard: Not unless you live in undisturbed woods and are really lucky. No one has figured out how to cultivate chantarelles yet. That's what makes it so special to find them in the wild!

Have you found any chantarelles yet this year? Have any good recipes? Let us know -- even if you're not willing to tell us your spot!

Fungus Among Us

Science writer Natalie Angier has an article in the New York Times this week exploring the role of fungi, as she puts it, From Killer to Dinner Companion. "Fungi are everywhere," she writes, "on every continent and in every sea, floating in the air, lacing through the soil, resting on your skin, colonizing mucosal cavities within, and festively decorating that long-neglected peach." She touches on chestnut blight, the white-nose syndrome that's killing bats, and athlete's foot, but also on the role of fungi in supporting plants (possibly as many as 90 percent of plant species depend on mycorrhizal fungi to obtain nutrients from the soil) and humans (in the form of yeast for making bread and alcohol). It's a quick and enjoyable read.