The organization of this field guide makes it an effective tool. Both the common names and the binomial genus species names are used. This guide breaks down each entry by Common name(s), Family name, and binomial name, Origin of the name, Season, Identification, Spore ID, Habitat, Look-alikes, Edibility, Medicinal Uses, Storage tips (for example, always cook a frozen mushroom while still frozen to avoid softening), author’s Comments, and a Recipe. Appendices include recipe resources, a grow your own mushrooms section, recommended books, and more. Finally, there is a bibliography and an index.
To identify a mushroom, follow this advice:
1.Use field guides: I have fourteen field guides and typically cross-reference a new mushroom in as many of them as time and endurance allow.
2.Join a mushroom society or club: This will shortcut your way to success. Clubs help you find like-minded friends and uncover ground where you never thought to look. They quickly add to your repertoire of known mushrooms.
3.Get field experience: Travel by foot and observe the characteristics of the many different mushroom environments. Do this often. Discover where the remaining old-growth forests are in your area and visit them. Understand that in newly planted forests (say, after a forest fire), both hardwoods and conifers provide super resources for newly developing saprophytic mushrooms. Frequent visits to a variety of forest and field biomes will, over the four seasons, reward you with the right places to go.
4.Discover mushroom partners: Mushrooms, animals, and plants live in close relationship with one another. You’ll find oyster mushrooms on maple and alder and less commonly on conifers. Locate morels in association with old apple and pear orchards. Seek them in recently burned-out conifer forests. These relationships are attended to in the text of each species, and identifying various Washington trees associated with mushrooms is covered in the next section following these strategies.
5.Identify mushroom structure: Mushrooms have a cap (pileous), stems (stipes), rings (annulus), and veils. Spores are reproduction bodies and come in various sizes, colors, and shapes. Spore-producing and disseminating organs are teeth, pores, gills, and in puffballs the entire inner area of the mushroom. A mushroom may have scales, hair, warts, scabs, and striations—or it may be smooth. Many mushrooms have a volva (an egg-like sack) from which they emerge. They may have rings, hanging remnants of a veil that covered the gills. In addition, mushroom structures come in numerous colors. A few mushrooms present juices or may bruise into different colors when handled. They are dry and smooth or moist and slippery, and a few have dots or are reticulated. Different species may be hard, fragile, flexible, or brittle. They have distinctive odors and distinctive flavors.
6.Make spore prints: Use spores as an identification tool: Separate the cap of a mushroom from its stem, and place it over the intersection of two pieces of paper (or other two-dimensional surface), one piece white and the other black. Clear glass is a particularly effective material. A spore print on glass allows you to scrape spores onto a microscope slide without contamination. It also allows you to scrape large numbers of spores for inoculation when growing your own mushrooms (see appendix B). After a few minutes or several hours, spores will drop from the mushroom’s gills, pores, or teeth, leaving a spore print. The color of this print helps indicate the mushroom’s identity.
Boletales spore print
Gymnopilus spore print
7.Learn about chemical tests and microscopy: This requires a basic knowledge of chemistry, safe handling, and access. Chemicals used include ammonia (NH4OH ammonium hydroxide), potassium hydroxide (KOH), iron salts (FeSO4), concentrated hydrochloric acid (HCl), and Melzer’s reagent (iodine, methyl chloride, and potassium iodide). For the mushrooms identified in this book, these tests are not absolutely necessary. However, should you go beyond the basics, familiarize yourself with chemical testing at these websites:
Using potassium hydroxide: www.mushroomexpert.com/microscope_ascos.html
Using Mezger’s reagent: www.mushroomexpert.com/microscope_spores.html
Microscope and reagent use: www.first-nature.com/fungi/facts/microscopy.php
www.centralpamushroomclub.org/sites/default/files/melzer.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melzer’s_reagent
Surfaces and flesh testing: www.mushroomexpert.com/macrochemicals.html
Overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_tests_in_mushroom_identification
8.Forage familiar ground: As you expand your knowledge, you will discover forests and fields that provide what you are looking for when you are looking for it and often reward you with a new find. Note these places in your mushroom notebook. Cherish and visit them often. These secret sanctuaries provide all the clues and context needed to be successful. Old-growth forests are most productive. After a few trips you will have a mental map and cognitive timetable that will lead you to a specific site at the right time of year to find exactly what you want.
This guide starts with easier-to-identify mushrooms and progresses to mushrooms that are more difficult to identify. For example, the first broad group of mushrooms a forager encounters in these pages are polypores with spore-emitting pores. Then comes tooth fungi with spore-producing spines or teeth. Chanterelles follow, with their ridges instead of gills. These ridges, unlike gills, are folds integrated with and part of the fruiting body’s flesh. Boletes come after chanterelles, and they produce and emit spores from tubes, whereas next, the puffballs, produce spores within their ball-like bodies and then emit them through a vent. You will experience these simpler-to-identify mushrooms in the field or you may purchase them from a farmer’s market.
There are a few pitfalls when searching for specific species and I will help you identify them. Following mushrooms with tubes, pores, ridges, teeth, and spherical puffballs are morels, with unique structures of their own. All of these can be found in the field or in the market. Coral mushrooms and gelatinous mushrooms follow the morels, and they are fairly easy to identify because of their atypical physical qualities. Eventually, you will reach a few families of gilled mushrooms, a vast group that includes many toxic varieties that require rigorous identification and cautious respect. This large group of gilled mushrooms is comprised of both delicious and toxic species. The final two chapters cover commercially available mushrooms and a few of the many difficult-to-identify and potentially toxic mushrooms. Throughout the book I will share tips for identifying, preparing, preserving, and growing your own mushrooms. All of this information is supported with mushroom-related websites and recipe resources that will delight your family and friends.
Pores, polypore
Tubes, bolete
Integrated ridges, chanterelle
Teeth, lion’s mane
Gills, Marasmius
WASHINGTON TREES AND ASSOCIATED MUSHROOMS
A successful search for mushrooms improves when you know the habitat in which they reside and the trees and other flora associated with them. Below are photos of trees that have relationships with specific fungi. For example, in the young, densely replanted forests of western hemlock and Douglas fir, chanterelles are found in abundance. Find cauliflower fungus on mature Douglas firs. Morels and king boletes are found in burned-out and recovering areas of lodgepole pine, larch, white fir, and Douglas fir. Oyster mushrooms are found on cottonwood, poplar, birch, maple, and alder. Look for matsutakes in association with western hemlock, sitka spruce, and pine trees. It is hypothesized that potent psilocybes are found in conjunction with alder and/or animal feces. Found in association with madrone are Leccinum, Mycenas, Tricholomas, and Amanitas species to name a few. Honey mushrooms, Trametes, and a number of polypores are found on or in association with big-leaf maple trees. Ponderosa pine habitats may produce Armillaria (honey mushrooms), matsutakes, boletes, Suillus, slippery jacks, and Amanitas. When foraging for mushrooms take notes and write down the trees that surround your find, and your futures sorties will become more productive.
Western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) has cones 1 inch long and often found in abundance under the tree. Young trees have drooping tops. The needles are soft and whitish underneath.
Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menzies) has pinecones up to 4 inches long, and if you look closely you will see what can be imagined as the hind legs and tails of mice ducked into the cone. The bark of a mature tree is deeply furrowed and thick (fire resistant).
Spruce (Picea) has sharp and stiff needles that are painful to grasp. Cones are up to 3 inches long and soft and papery to the touch. Bark has a chip appearance and is thin and scaly looking.
Cedar (Thuja plicata) is little mentioned in association with mushrooms because of its acidic nature and associated fungicides in its chemistry. It has small, flat, scaly leaves, branches that hang like fronds, and half-inch-long cones.
Red alder (Alnus rubra) is a deciduous tree, shedding leaves in the fall. It is similar to birch but has rougher leaves, and the whitish color of alder is caused by lichens living under the bark.
Big-leaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) is a large maple with five lobed leaves, 5 to 12 inches long, as wide as they are long. These trees are richly adorned with lichens, ferns, club mosses, and true mosses that do not harm the tree and take their nutrients from the air.
Madrone is a Pacific Coast dweller and offers mushroom-foraging opportunities. Its bark is striking and unique.
Larch trees are also good places to find specific mushrooms such as agarikon and Laetiporus conifericola. They thrive near water and have unique needles and cones.
Ponderosa pine has unique bark. Mature trees have yellow to orange and red bark displayed in broad plates separated by black crevices. Younger trees have blackish-brown bark. There are five sub-species. Needles are long and bright green.
