A speaking—and picking—acquaintance with wild mushrooms can add interest to any foray through the fields and woods and zest to the meal afterward—if you know your mushrooms.
More than 4,000 species or kinds of wild mushrooms have been described, and even an expert who devotes a lifetime to their study can hardly hope to know all of them.
But one does not need to be an expert to become sufficiently familiar with some of the choicest and most common kinds to pick and eat them with perfect safety.
However, if you gather wild mushrooms for a cat, adhere to two simple rules:
1. Learn the characteristics and habits of some of the common, unmistakable, edible kinds.
2. Pick only those that you know are good and wholesome. If you are doubtful, leave them alone.
Several pamphlets and books describe and illustrate many species for the beginner and the more advanced mushroom hunter. Some of these are listed below.
Your local library may have these or other mushroom books, so phone the library and ask.
The average person can learn to recognize many more common kinds with a modicum of study.
Mushroom Hunting Groups and Societies
In many communities, groups or societies have been formed to collect and identify fleshy fungi or mushrooms.
The members go on hunts or field trips together or meet regularly during the mushroom season to display, compare, study, and talk about the mushrooms they have found.
Some of these mycological societies boast their libraries dealing with mushrooms and their identification.
Most groups have members with long experience in and much enthusiasm for collecting, identifying, preserving, and cooking wild mushrooms.
These experts are willing and eager to share their knowledge and enthusiasm; their help can be invaluable to the beginner and very encouraging.
The individualist (God bless him!) may prefer to work alone. As proof that even a rank amateur, individualist or not, can quickly learn to identify some of the best wild mushrooms, a few common, easily recognized, and choice kinds are here described and illustrated.
All of these occur throughout most of the United States and Canada, and all but the shaggy mane can be preserved by either drying or freezing.
Different Mushroom Kinds
Morel: Morchella Deliciosa and Other Species
Time and place of appearance: Mid-spring, in woods and orchards.
Description: Plants 4” to 6” inches high, consisting of a cylindrical stem 1/2″ to 1″ inch in diameter and a conical cap, the outside of which is chambered somewhat like a sponge. The cap and stem are tan in color, hollow, and brittle.
Edibility: Super.
Oyster Fungus: Pleurotus Ostreatus
Time and place of appearance: On decaying hardwood logs and trees or the ground above decaying roots—spring to fall
Description: Caps white, each cap 2” to 6” inches wide, several caps one over the other in a clump, each cap tapering to a short, thick stem; gills white and extending down the stem.
Edibility: Fair to excellent.
Fairy Ring: Marasmius Oreades
Time and place of appearance: Spring to late fall, lawns, golf course fairways, parkways, wherever there is permanent grass sod.
Description: Plants up to 4” inches high; cap 1” to 2” inches wide, off-white to tan, nearly flat, or with a pronounced hump in the middle. Gills are white and rather distant from one another.
Stem central, about ⅛-inch in diameter. Both stem and cap are somewhat tough in texture. The plants come up in fairly dense clumps in circles, rings, or partial rings that may be up to 10’ feet in diameter. Usually, successive crops appear after each rain and in the same place year after year.
These mushrooms are said to be of reviving habit, which simply means that once they have been formed, they endure for some time, drying up in dry weather and expanding or reviving again during moist weather.
Most old mushroom specimens are likely to be wormy and are not attractive for food.
Edibility: Excellent.
Sulfur Shelf: Polyporus Sulphureus
Time and place of appearance: Midsummer to late fall, on decaying logs, stumps, and trees.
Description: Fruit bodies are shelf-like, usually overlapping shelves, the upper side of fresh young specimens banded orange and yellow, the under the surface consisting of line pores or tubes, pale yellow to chrome yellow. The flesh is firm and white or pale yellow.
Edibility: Excellent. Cut in strips and fried in deep fat, they are superb.
Shaggy Mane: Coprinus Comatus
Time and place of appearance: Late spring to fall, along parkways and roadsides, occasionally in gardens, especially where leaf mold or horse manure has been worked into the soil.
Description: Plants 4” to 8” inches high, stem cylindrical, white ¼” to ½-inch in diameter; cap cylindrical, 1” to 2” inches in diameter, covered with shaggy fibers or scales; gills wide, very close together, first white, then pale pink, finally dissolving from the base of the cap upward and dripping away in a black liquid.
Edibility: Excellent, providing it is gathered while young and firm before the cap liquefies.
Pests Control
Practically all mushrooms, wild and cultivated, are subject to invasion by the larvae of various fungus flies.
When you gather wild mushrooms for eating, cut off each stem above the ground to avoid getting soil with them.
Also, split each specimen down through the cap and stem, examine the interior for larval tunnels, and discard infested ones.
Available Literature on Mushrooms
The following literature on mushrooms is available: Mushroom Collecting for Beginners, by J. Walton Groves.
A bulletin that describes and illustrates about a dozen kinds of edible and some kinds of poisonous mushrooms.
Available without cost from the Division of Botany, Depart. of Agriculture, Ottawa, Canada. Mushrooms and Toadstools, by H. T. Gussow and W. S. Odell. Describes 160 kinds, with good illustrations of most. Available from the same address as above.
Common Edible Mushrooms, by Clyde M. Christensen. Published by the University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 14, Minnesota.
Reprint edition by Charles T. Branford Company. Describes and illustrates about 50 species. Illustrated Keys to the Common Fleshy Fungi by the same author. Keys and descriptions of 350 kinds of fleshy fungi, with some line drawings.
Published by the Burgess Publishing Company, 426 S. 6th St., Minneapolis 14, Minn. The Mushroom Hunter’s Field Guide, by A. H. Smith. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Describes and illustrates over 100 species.
Mushroom in Their Natural Habitats, by the same author. Published by Sawyer, Inc., Portland, Oregon. Descriptive text, plus reels of colored transparencies and a stereoscopic viewer for the reels of 231 species.
44659 by Dr. Clyde M. Christensen