The first word of the title is: at

I know this is getting mushroom-heavy but yesterday’s events compel me onward. It is, after all, the nature of nature that when it rains it pours and the appearance of living things can come all at once, so it’s not my fault

And by the way, Bev reminded me of Tom Volk’s Fungi Website, which is a great resource with excellent writing and photos.

Yesterday as I was doing my daily Microstegium weeding I came across this area, a steep, southwest-facing slope down to Sparkleberrysprings Creek, held up by the many white oaks that grow here. I’ve circled in red the position of just a few of these mushrooms:




It’s been ten years since I’ve seen chanterelles growing in such profusion - there were literally dozens of large ones popping up all over this slope. Ours are a peach (or salmon) color, and are probably Cantharellus cibarius. Even the names are beautiful. This one was 4 inches across and 3 inches high, a hefty piece of flesh. Sauteed, they’re wonderful; frozen, they develop a strong and objectionable flavor. I haven’t tried drying them.

This is a choice, edible mushroom, and it is easy to recognize, with only the poisonous Jack O'Lantern (Ompholotus olearius) coming close, and since chanterelles pop up out of the soil and the lookalike grows on trees, and the gill structure is completely different, there really is no reason for mistaking them.


You can see what I mean about the gills. They are not your typical mushroom gills. They are more like ridges, and the spores form on the surface.

There are a lot of species of chanterelles. They come in all sorts of colors - red, yellow, white, and black. Just about all are choice. Besides morels, this is the one wild mushroom that I will harvest with confidence. There are always the caveats that you always cook wild mushrooms and if you’ve never had a particular species you eat only a small bit at first, since some people react differently than most.

Here’s another edible, this time, a bolete. This is Strobilomyces spp. possibly S. floccopus or S. confusus. The two can only really be told apart by looking at the spore shapes, but at any rate, it’s Old Man of the Woods. Although some say that they look unappetizing, I think they look absolutely delicious, but have never tried one. They pop up a lot under our pines, but this one was in the same area as the chanterelles. One of the neat things about them is how scaly and wooly they are, and they are very soft and velvety to the touch.

You can see here why they’re boletes. Underneath is not gills, but rather a flat plated surface that is porous, and this is where the spores are formed.


Also growing in this area were what are definitely Amanita, and possibly Panther Amanita, Amanita pantherina. It is poisonous. From the top, with its warty cap:


You can see here the veil remnants and the swollen base that are typical of amanitas:


And, finally, an emerging deadly button: