How hard is it to identify wild mushrooms, my friends?
I live in a forest of Douglas Fir, Madrona, and Alder with a few Hemlock. Yes, really beautiful. And full of mushrooms this time of year. Last year I collected some gnarly ones to decorate my front porch. Then I bought a Field Guide to Pacific Northwest Mushrooms and studied it cover to cover. They all look alike! So this year I kicked it up a notch and attended a 2 hour identification workshop. The speaker, a state park ranger and mushroom hobbiest, droned on and on about spore prints, precise shape characteristics, whether they have "sap", smell, taste (taking the tinest bit of a bite...if you were pretty darn sure it wouldn't kill you), etc., etc,. etc. I just wanted to be told "this is a death cap, this one is psychedelic, this one is delicious"...ya know? In fact, of the 40 or so examples the ranger had on display, about 1/3 of them he could not identify. Still it was creepy to see the big, red polka-dotted
amanita muscaria and the really cool looking large
boletus; some delicious and some poisonious. And I apparently have a treasure trove of
chanterelles in my backyard...but then again, there is the
false chanterelle. So, I'm sorta back at square one as far as feeling like I have a clue about what I spot on my hikes and horse-back-rides. Not a bad way to spend time, though, stalking the wild mushroom.
I live in a forest of Douglas Fir, Madrona, and Alder with a few Hemlock. Yes, really beautiful. And full of mushrooms this time of year. Last year I collected some gnarly ones to decorate my front porch. Then I bought a Field Guide to Pacific Northwest Mushrooms and studied it cover to cover. They all look alike! So this year I kicked it up a notch and attended a 2 hour identification workshop. The speaker, a state park ranger and mushroom hobbiest, droned on and on about spore prints, precise shape characteristics, whether they have "sap", smell, taste (taking the tinest bit of a bite...if you were pretty darn sure it wouldn't kill you), etc., etc,. etc. I just wanted to be told "this is a death cap, this one is psychedelic, this one is delicious"...ya know? In fact, of the 40 or so examples the ranger had on display, about 1/3 of them he could not identify. Still it was creepy to see the big, red polka-dotted amanita muscaria and the really cool looking large boletus; some delicious and some poisonious. And I apparently have a treasure trove of chanterelles in my backyard...but then again, there is the false chanterelle. So, I'm sorta back at square one as far as feeling like I have a clue about what I spot on my hikes and horse-back-rides. Not a bad way to spend time, though, stalking the wild mushroom.
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