Monthly Archives: November 2015

More mushrooms in Oregon: the coast, dunes, and city parks

As the drought dragged on in California this fall I longed for rainier pastures in Oregon. Fortunately my friend Roo who is also a PhD student in mycology lives in Eugene where mushrooms are abundant! After having so much fun and finding chanterelles in the Cascades the last time, I returned this time to look for Porcinis and Matsutakes on the coast in the dunes.

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Mushroom hunting along the Oregon dunes

To me it’s a pretty irregular sight to associate mushroom hunting with sand, but don’t you just love this photo of Roo walking across the dunes with his mushroom basket? Turns out the dunes are a great place to go mushroom hunting! Plus you get awesome views of the Oregon coast. Not a bad place to hunt, right?

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Oregon coast

We walked around for a while and came across some lovely giant Amanita muscaria. Unfortunately they were a bit soggy and difficult to take home but they sure are pretty.

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Amanita muscaria or the fairytale mushroom in the woods

In addition to mushroom hunting on the coast we also did some city mushroom hunting in Eugene at a local park. It was a beautiful park with so much green peppered with yellow fall colors.

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Fall colors in Oregon

While we did not find any edible mushrooms in the park we found some really cool little guys including these cute little Calocera cornea jelly fungi.

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Calocera cornea covering a dead log

We also found some fun ascomycetes called Xylaria hypoxylon decaying wood. Can you guess why their common name is the candle snuff fungus or more ominously dead man’s fingers?

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Xylaria hypoxylon AKA dead man’s fingers or the candlesnuff fungus

There was lots of dead wood in this park so we saw lots of interesting wood decay mushrooms including this really cool polypore Oligoporus caesius commonly known as the blue cheese fungus.

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Can you guess why this is known as the blue cheese fungus?

Roo is really into wood decay mushrooms and ascomycetes in the Xylariales in particular so he spent lots of time poking around dead logs.

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Roo poking dead logs for ascomycetes

I was particularly impressed by this jelly fungus/polypore called Phlebia tremellosa that was all over a dead log. I’ve never seen this mushroom before and it was so slimy and jelly like.

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Phlebia tremellosa covering a dead log

It also had cool pores on the underside. It’s hard to describe the texture but it was quite jiggly and fun.

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Pored underside of Phlebia tremellosa

This was quite an awesome city park and had some lovely giant Douglas fir trees in it. Aren’t they majestic?

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Giant Douglas fir tree in Eugene park

So I know what you are thinking – nice pictures and nice mushrooms of mushroom hunting on the Oregon coast and in Eugene, but where are the edibles??? While we unfortunately did not quite find the bounty that I was hoping for, we did happen upon a few king boletes Boletus edulis in nestled under the bushes in the forests on the Oregon coast.

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Boletus edulis the prized king porcini

Perhaps more exciting, I found this baby nestled under a manzanita bush. Get excited for the next couple posts where I post about what we cooked with the porcinis and matsutakes!

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Tricholoma magnivelare the American Matsutake

Oyster mushrooms and porcinis in class

Despite the extensive drought in California, some prized edible mushrooms are sneaking their way into my classroom. As mentioned in a previous post, I’m teaching a class at UC Berkeley this semester called California Mushrooms. Students bring in mushrooms that they find hiking around the local forests or on campus, and we identify them in lab. Imagine my delight when this giant pile of oyster mushrooms walked into my classroom a few weeks ago!

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Whenever we get a sizable collection of edible mushrooms in the classroom we cook them so that all of the students can try them. Oyster mushrooms, also known as Pleurotus ostreatusare not necessarily the most prized mushrooms because they are not that scarce. Unlike chanterelles and porcinis, which are ectomycorrhizal fungi and are mutualistically associated with trees, oyster mushrooms are saptrophic fungi that make a living by decaying dead material such as wood. This is an easy environment to reproduce in culture so oyster mushrooms are cultivated and thus readily abundant. You might have seen them in your local grocery store. Or you might be seeing them on downed logs while hiking around in the forest, which is where my student found them in the woods in Marin county. 
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We cleaned and sliced up the mushrooms and prepped them on our handy wooden cutting board in lab. As you saw in the chicken of the woods post, we have a set up where we bring in a portable hot plate and cook mushrooms in the fume hood.

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We like to cook the mushrooms simply in butter and add salt so the students can taste them in their purest element. I do enjoy oyster mushrooms but I will admit that they are not the most flavorful.  However, oyster mushrooms would add great texture and meaty flavor to a stir fry or an egg dish.

IMG_2484Chicken of the woods, which I wrote about in my last post, has been coming in a lot as well as it is a common parasite of Eucalyptus trees on campus and in Albany and Berkeley. Since they are so tasty and were such a hit in the previous class, we decided to cut those up and cook them as well.

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Don’t they add a lovely color? Here are the oyster mushrooms all cooked up. You can see we use pretty fancy flatware in class…

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Now of course the students love trying all new mushrooms but I was especially excited when we got our first porcini! Alas it was only a single mushroom that was found by one of the students hiking around in Mendocino, but I had to cut it up for students to try since it is such a prized edible.

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Porcinis are ectomycorrhizal fungi, mutualistically associated with trees, so they must be foraged in order to find them because it is a really difficult environment to recreate in culture. Many mushrooms in the genus Boletus are lumped into the edible category of porcinis, but the one that we had in class was the queen bolete Boletus regineus known for the white bloom she has on her cap when young. Mushrooms in the genus Boletus are distinctive for having tubes instead of gills. Remember my post about hedgehog mushrooms where I mentioned that mushrooms in the genus Hydnum have spiny teeth instead of gills? Mushrooms have evolved all sorts of awesome mechanisms for dispersing their spores!

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Porcinis are identifiable due to the brown bun shaped caps, the tubes, and the reticulation, or netting, on the top of the stem. Can you see it? As I mentioned previously, porcinis are a rare find and are super delectable so I was very excited to cook it in class.

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As usual, we kept it simple cooking it in the frying pan with butter and salt. Porcinis are delicious in egg dishes, gravy, soups, many Italian dishes, and would likely add a rich buttery flavor to any dish. They were super buttery and delicious! Here’s my co-TA Vince enjoying mushrooms in our lab.

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Here are the students gathering round to try the mushrooms! Bon apetit!

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