Oyster Mushrooms found in later summer/early fall in NJ

Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus)

For years I’ve stumpled upon prolific patches of wild oyster mushrooms growing in the woods while hiking, but every time I did they were usually pretty water logged and teaming with little black beetles,  never in a state where collecting them ended up with something I felt any interest in eating once I got it back to the house…I’ve seen them in the middle of the summer all the way until early December this year, and it’s usually available year round these days in stores like Whole Foods.

Possible Angel Wing Mushroom Poisonings

I’d also read about some possible oyster mushroom related poisonings in Japan a few years back, which led  me to be a bit less interested in trying to collect anything oyster mushroom related for awhile…

Oyster Mushrooms — Angels Wings

Apparently those poisonings were thought to be a specific type of oyster mushrooms known  as Angels Wings. On the other hand, I’ve also read accounts of people having eaten Angel  Wing mushrooms their whole lives without incident, and indeed the people poisoned in the Japan incident seemed to have been quite accustomed to gathering and eating them…my guess is that there was some unknown factor involved that we don’t yet know about, but that’s just a guess.

Everywhere I look I see Oyster Mushrooms!

Oyster Mushrooms growing behind a woody vine.

Recently though, while hiking with my dogs around the lake behind where I’m staying, I noticed this patch of mushrooms growing in a tree where I had seen similar flushes of mushrooms grow over the past 2 years of hiking this location.

I always thought when I passed them, maybe those are a type of oyster mushroom,  but I was never interested enough to actually confirm that. This year, I took a sample home and took spore prints, and also got a little help from the fine folks over at wildmushroomhunting.org to help confirm my find.

Oyster mushrooms are considered by many to be a choice edible, and are easily purchased online or at grocery stores with decent produce sections these days. You can also buy some pretty decent Oyster Mushroom Grow Kit
that I’ve seen online that seem pretty foolproof and like they’re a great way to become familiar with what the mushroom looks like up close without having any fear that you might be mis-identifying your oyster mushrooms

How to Identify Oyster Mushrooms

Oyster Mushrooms Growing Up a Tree

At first, trying to identify oyster mushrooms can seem a bit confusing as there are several variations of oyster mushrooms that you are likely to encounter depending on your location and the time of year. One characteristic to look for in an oyster mushrooms is that the gills run down the stem.

Oyster Mushrooms Have Decurrent Gills that Run Down the Stem

Oyster mushrooms have very basic, stubby stems which are sometimes hard to even notice. If you look closely at this area, and you are indeed looking at an Oyster mushroom, you should notice that the gills actually run down the stem. Here the gills would be described as being “decurrent.” The gills should be a bit close together, and broad in shape  running all the way down the mushroom to and along the stubby stem if present, or else up to the edge of the tree almost. The color of the gills can be grey to yellowish from what I have collected.

The cap size and color can  vary a bit, and that’s one of the reasons I shied away from trying to identifying and enjoy these popular wild edible mushrooms initially, but they’re actually pretty easy to identify really.  Oyster mushrooms can be white, grey,tan, dark brown even…they can also appear in a variety of sizes as you can see on the pictures I’ve posted along with this article. Notice the range of cap size in the picture to the right even, everything from a few inches up to 4-5 inches there, and can fan out to about 8 inches at times.

Take Spore Prints When

Identifying Wild Mushrooms

Oyster Mushroom Spore Print

It might make the casual mushroom hunter feel a bit geeked out to take a spore print from a wild mushroom. Just the act of stooping down and picking a mushroom up is odd for some people to let themselves do, not to mention carrying it all the way back to your car, and driving home with it in the passenger seat!

But if you’ve already gotten over the social stigmas surrounding the idea of wild mushroom hunting, and have a bunch on your kitchen table for identifying and possible consumption, then it’s a good idea to start learning to take spore prints of the mushrooms you gather. Spore prints will give you additional identifying data which can help distinguish from a edible mushrooms sometimes poisonous look-a-likes.

I like to take spore prints on both black and white paper usually. That way whether the spores are light or dark, at least on side of the paper will take a nice print that you can use to help identify what you gathered. Sometimes you’ll see something in the black paper

Oyster Mushroom Spore Print Looks Like Santa's Nose, Mouth and Beard?

print, and then something else in the white paper print that you didn’t notice in the black print. Take a good look at both sides. Spore prints can sometimes come out quite striking in appearance. The one I took for these Oyster mushrooms actually ended up reminding me of the nose, mouth and beard of Santa Claus!

Santa’s Beard in the Spore Print?! LOL

Besides it’s resemblance to Santa, what we’re really noticing here is the color of the spore print. It’s a bit difficult to tell via the picture I took, but the color of the spore print when I first observed it by eye was a light purple tinted grey…when I looked up what color Oyster mushrooms spores should be, bingo…lilac to light grey. That alone made me pretty sure that what my eyes where telling me where oyster mushrooms, were indeed oyster mushrooms.

Oyster Mushrooms Are A Choice Edible!

Oyster Mushroom Gills

Congratulations, if you’ve found oyster mushrooms then you’ve got yourself a choice edible on your hands. I find them to have a pleasant, light woodsy odor. There are a number of ways to cook oyster  mushrooms, but as with any wild edible mushroom I gather, I first like to  cook it with just a little butter, a little olive oil, and then just a pinch of salt. These basic ingredients usually help bring out the natural taste of the wild edible mushroom you’ve gathered and identified.

Oyster Mushroom Cluster

It bears repeating though, please never consume any wild mushroom without being beyond certain you have identified 100% correctly. I find having someone with experience confirm  what I’ve gone through the process of identifying lends me the extra confidence I need before I’m willing to put a wild mushroom in my stomach. If in doubt throw it out!

Reishi Mushroom or Ling Chih mushroom

G.tsugae – A Mushroom Mega Medicine!

Here in NJ, the Hemlock Varnish Shelf mushroom has been referred to as the “local variety” of the world famous Reishi mushroom, which has been used medicinally for thousands of years in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to treat a wide array of conditions, including asthma, anti-inflammatory diseases, and is even being studied by modern science to treat several forms of cancer. Apparently, Hemlock Varnish  Shelf mushrooms are one of the more potent species of Reishi mushrooms  at inhibiting the proliferation of human breast cancer cells. (PMID: 17034284)

G.tsugae - An Easy to Spot Mushroom

Hemlock Varnish Shelves

The Hemlock Varnish Shelf mushroom, in my experience, seems to be relatively common, at least in northwestern NJ.  G. tsugae is pretty easy to spot due to its striking almost brick red color, at times with rings of bright yellow forming a ring around the edge during its earlier stages of growth. The older they get, the darker red they appear. My dried out samples that I left to dry over the summer are now a dark,almost merlot colored red. You can often find these mushrooms growing out of decaying stumps or logs of hemlock, fir and pine trees. I’ve seen them growing out of the ground where old roots where buried, and I’ve seen them forming prolific shelves that can go pretty far up a tree.  Lucky for me, I found a lot of ones closer to the ground and easy to take pictures of and collect a few to take home and study.

Reishi mushrooms aka Ling Chih mushrooms

Dry G. tsugae Out for Future Use

When collecting Hemlock Varnish Shelf mushrooms (or Reishi), if you plan on drying them out for future use, it is wise to cut the mushroom into strips to dry out while it is still soft.  If you let the whole mushroom dry out, you will find (as I have)  that the mushroom when dried becomes very hard and as a  result difficult to cut for use. Most often reishi mushrooms would be used as a tea, or else be made into an alcohol extract, either of which work best when using small, broken down bits (ground down is even better) to aid the extraction process.

G.tsugae – One of Nature’s  Many Medicinals

Ganoderma tsugae is a very promising mushroom with a wide scope of potential medicinal uses that are being studied in many big name hospitals and universities, but isn’t it amazing that you can go for a hike in your local woods and find some?We forget how many of our pharmaceutical drugs were derived from nature in the first place.  The more I learn about my environment and the plants and mushrooms growing all around me, I am amazed at just how many of them have verifiable medicinal or nutritional value. Nature truly is a cornucopia when you open your eyes to it!

G. tsugae, a close cousin of the Reishi mushroom

A Young Hemlock Varnish Shelf Mushroom

Old Hemlock Varnish Shelf Mushrooms

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Dingo the wild mushroom hunting hound next to some reishi mushrooms

Thanks to the folks over at WildMushroomHunting.org for the help telling the difference between these and regular reishi mushrooms!

Wolf's Milk Slime (Lycogala epidendrum)

I’d never actually seen this mushroom before I came across it in later October of this year, although according to my National Audubon Society Field Guide to Mushrooms they are pretty common and “frequently encountered”. Their pink color definitely makes them stand out from the brown, earthy tones of  the forest floor. At first I thought maybe these were some sort of puffball mushroom I had never come across.

While these wild mushrooms might look a bit like cotton candy or some sort of marshmallow treat, they aren’t  considered edible.  They actually use a pink liquid if you break the skin, and have also been called “Toothpaste slime” because of the stuff that oozes out looks like pink toothpaste, although from what I’ve read  it’s not a natural toothpaste substitute…so I don’t expect to see anyone in the wild mushroom hunting club showing up with pink teeth!

Wolf's Milk Slime (Lycogala epidendrum) also called Toothpaste Slime mushroom

Lycogala epidendrum growing on a dead log

Wolf's Milk Slime remind me of puffball mushrooms

Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora)

Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora)

While Indian Pipes  aren’t actually mushrooms, they always seem to sprout up just before the first wave of mushrooms in my area. Once I see these guys reaching their pale spindly selves to the sky, I know that the first mushrooms of the season are just a rainy day or two away.

They’re Not Mushrooms…They’re Parasitic Plants!

An interesting thing about Indian Pipes, also known as Ghost Plants,  is that they are one of the few plants that don’t produce their own chlorophyll, instead it is parasitic, more specifically its hosts are fungi that are mycorrhizal with near bye trees. This means that in a trickle down kind of way, the tree is making the energy needed to also sustain the Indian Pipes, who don’t make their own chlorophyll. Since Indian Pipe is not dependent on sunlight to grow, you’ll often find it in the shaded understory of dense forest.

Red Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora)

Medicinal  Uses of Indian Pipe

While Indian Pipes are technically not considered edible, they do have some documented history of being used medicinally in folk medicine and by certain Native American tribes, “ as a nervine to relieve symptoms of neurological chemistry disruption and pain. Used to stop seizures, convulsions, insomnia, mental disorders, and chronic muscle spasms.” (link)

Color Variants of Montropa uniflora

Indian Pipe also known as the Ghost Plant

Almost all the time I will see them as mostly white, with varying bits of color in the center “flower like”  spot. Often there are black dots or flecks freckled on the white.  Once in a while though, I see some that come up in various shades of pink to red, the dark red once being pretty rare to come across.

I love taking pictures of Indian Pipes as they often remind me of congregations of people standing around together; sometimes of Christmas carolers, or else people standing together in prayer. The key to taking a good photo of them is to get down close, and to use your camera’s macro settings, and keep a steady hand. Unlike people or animals, mushrooms and plants make great practice studies for portrait taking because they don’t move that much!

…I know it’s a long winter away at this point, but I can’t wait to see these guys again in the Spring!

**some info borrowed and double checked from National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms (National Audubon Society Field Guides)

Shaggy Manes are a choice wild edible mushroom!

Young Shaggy Mane Wild Mushroom

A Sneak Peak Inside Shaggy Mane (Coprinus comatus)

Two Shaggy Mane mushrooms growing side by side

An aging Shaggy Mane mushroom

Aging Shaggy Mane mushroom from above

Shaggy Mane mushroom decomposing

Shaggy Mane mushroom's inky demise

Choice Wild Edible – Giant Puffball Mushroom

These things are such a treat to find! They taste awesome and are  easy to identify. Once they reach the size of a volleyball, there really isn’t much else it could be. Although it is wise to cut the mushroom in half and look for signs of emerging gills as several Amanita mushrooms, including some of the deadly poisonous ones, form a large ball like structure before they unfurl into a more typically recognized mushrooms shape.

The texture of the Giant Puffball when cut open, if it is still young enough and worthwhile to collect and eat, should be a nice, white and fluffy texture that resembles marshmallows or perhaps angel food cake. I’ll be frying these bad boys up in slice of bread sized slices, dipped in some egg and bread crumbs fried in olive oil.

Some people refer  to this wild edible mushroom as the fillet mignonette of the mushrooms world. It really is a delicious find, and I am happy the rains have brought me this gift.

As an aside, isn’t it crazy how much the one on the left looks like a face or a skull?!?! Maybe I could get a wild edible Eastern Cauliflower mushroom and implant it to be the brain of the large wild edible Giant Puffball mushoom’s skull! lol

Black staining polypore top view. These look a bit like Hen of the Woods sometimes too, except Hens start showing in Septemeber, not in August usually.

Or at least that’s what I think they are so far by asking around and comparing pictures…I’m still waiting on the spore print to take…so I can’t say 100% for sure what it is, but I am leaning towards black staining polypore.

I found these sizable, wild mushrooms while taking my dogs for a walk around a nice nearby glacial lake. I wasn’t planning on looking for mushrooms, and was really just taking my dogs to the lake to let them go swimming, so decided to leave my camera at home and just use my iPhone to take pictures of anything I happened across. Just a few hundred yards onto the trail I ended up finding lots of wild mushrooms totally worth taking  pictures of, including a large patch of well developed chanterelles, with the perfect natural lighting to capture their vibrant yet sublte shade of creamy orange…as nerdy as it sounds, I was excited to take their picture. They would make great additions to my library of mushroom pictures! So I reach for my pocket, and realize CRAP, I left my iPhone at home too! DOH! Moral of the story, always bring your camera because might forget your iPhone too! lol

Plate full of chanterelle mushrooms from today's hike. They smell just like dried apricots!

Thankfully though, I still never at least leave home to go hiking without at least bringing a plastic baggie along, just in case. Even though plastic bags tend to accelerate the rate of decay of mushrooms (or any veggies and fruits actually)…it’s still sometimes just easier in the event you happen find something you just can’t leave behind after seeing it. Well today’s just in case became a plateful of sweet apricot smelling chanterelles! Nice, big fleshy ones too.  So, even tho I was without a camera, I was still pretty stoked to find a bunch of tasty chanterelles to bring home. I quickly gathered up all the bright orange spots I could see from the trail’s edge and from beneath the canopy of ferns right past the trail’s edge. This was one of those times when I will use a stick to sweep through the ferns. More than once I’ve found a coiled snake under the same type of ferns! But not today, nothing but chanterelles and sun spots that sometimes trick my eye into thinking I found even more chanterelles…but no snakes thankfully.

Anytime I find a good flush of chanterelles, I try to hike a few hundred yards in each direction because often I will find several more little patches growing. Sometimes you can almost get a sense of the path the mycelium took across the forest floor, often following wherever water flows occur, and where there is a lot of mossy ground .Well, today was no different! My fungi recon work turned up several other chanterelle patches. It was definitely already a good day for unexpected tasty dinner finds… But once I got to the top of the hill, still hunched from grabbing up the last of the chanterelles,  I find myself staring face to face with this bad boy!

wild edible mushroom pictures – black staining polypore

Normally, and by normally I mean like every other single time I’ve gone hiking at this location, I’ve brought my camera because this place is like fungi-central. I’ve found more mushrooms there over the past few years than any other spot, and everything from chanterelles, to chicken of the woods, to morels, to boletes of every imaginable kind…a person could literally fill a whole book with just mushroom pictures from this one spot (hmmm, note to self, put out mushroom pictures coffee table picture book!). But of course today I had no cameras at all, so I actually went home after walking my dogs, got my camera, drove back and took pictures and then collected this hefty beast, along with a few smaller ones and brought them back home. On my return trip I actually accidentally barged in on a couple kids smoking some weed in the woods ahaha, too bad they took off before I could ask for a whiff…

Black staining polypore and me

I’ve never eaten this mushroom before, and have read it is edible but less tasty than Hen of the Woods or Chicken of the Woods, but it sure smells delicious in an almost fruity way. I suspect I will enjoy it a lot actually if the smell of it fresh is any indication. For now it’s sitting in my fridge, waiting until tomorrow so I can clean it up and try cooking some up and having a taste!

Smooth Chanterelles (Cantharellus lateritius)

Despite the rainclouds being stingy the past couple weeks and everything being close to bone dry at all the local hiking trails, I still ended up finding lots of mushroom, and taking some pretty cool mushroom pictures during my hike into the woods with my dogs today.

I’ll do my best to try to give correct identifications for these, but I am trying to identify them using the mushroom pictures I took only…please keep in mind that the information I post throughout this blog is merely my best educated guess, and should in no way be used as your only guide to try to identify any wild mushrooms.

Considering I didn’t bring any of the mushrooms home with me to properly identify by taking spore prints, performing reagent tests, using  since things have been so dry lately,  and no real rain to speak of,  I didn’t plan on finding any wild edible mushrooms and left my mushroom collecting basket back at home. But that’s why I love taking mushroom pictures! It’s almost like I still collected a bunch of wild mushrooms to bring home to identify.

The key is to make sure you take enough pictures from different angles and of the entire mushroom to give yourself as much of a chance to see as many distinguishing charactersitics of the wild mushroom you are trying to identify as possible.

REMEMBER: Never rely on a mushroom picture by itself to identify any wild mushroom that you plan to consume, no matter who is identifying the mushroom in question! But don’t be afraid to study your mushroom pictures and start to train your eyes to find the at times minute details that will help you properly identify some of the more difficult to identify mushrooms, especially with Boletes which I often find myself stumped trying to identify. Despite that, Boletes are a pretty safe in general to collect and consume.

The general rule of thumb is any boletes without red pores, and without pores that are yellow and stain blue are most likely going to be safe to consume, although there’s plenty of chance the mushroom will still be bitter or if you are lucky just plain old tasteless and slimy.

Still, it’s best to not put your health on the line by blindly trusting in a rule of thumb that might be right only most of the time and not 100% of the time. Be patient and wait until the day you are beyond a doubt certain. You’ll be surprised at how tempted you might feel sometimes when you have been searching for a particular wild edible mushroom for ages without luck and then find some specimen that is maybe it but you’re not sure…today you can pretty much find any wild edible mushroom to buy online if you’re that curious and can’t wait. Don’t take any foolish risks.

Instead, just be thrilled for the opportunity to take some more mushroom pictures, and be glad for the chance to add to your mushroom picture collection. There’s no rush. If you’re that hungry, eat a snickers and leave the unidentified mushrooms to the compost heap!

Be wise and live to identify another mushroom on another day, for as they say there are bold mushroom hunters, and old mushroom hunters, but very few bold old mushroom hunters!

All mushrooms suggest some sort of character or persona to me, and that will usually influence how I frame my best mushroom pictures. The weird mushrooms pictures offer a rather unique chance to photograph something that strikes a unique pose for the camera. These 10 mushrooms pictures are my Top 10 Weird Mushroom Pictures. I hope you enjoy them.

A mysterious mushroom picture…not sure what kind this is, but it reminds me of a sweaty brain.

A really weird mushroom picture of some funky fungus that looks like a play-doh beard. I think this one is Stemonitis axifera.

A bizarre decaying mushroom picture…this weird one really caught my eye on that hike.

This strange mushroom picture is a weird one indeed. This one I know the name of, Dead man's Fingers. I could totally see why they got that name!

Weird mushroom picture of an Eastern Cauliflower mushroom. Looks like a brain, tastes even better!

Weird Morel mushroom picture. These guys always remind me of little cartoon wizards straight out of Fantasia.

The weirdest mushroom pictures – elegant stinkhorn mushroom. That thing is covered in elegance! Or something!

Squaw Corn – weird mushroom pictures…technically it's not a mushroom, but I find them all the time growing right along side them.

Wacky and weird mushroom pictures – Clavaria pulchra is my best guess, but it reminds me of the wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man to me

This weird mushroom picture is of a once beautiful Shaggy Mane Mushroom, but now looks like a broken umbrella out of a strange goth movie.

Mushroom Hunting for Wild Edible Mushrooms – Chanterelles

Or at least it was for the past few days for me. I’ve been lucky enough to find several pretty prolific patches of Black Trumpet chanterelles this season. Another name for black trumpets is Horns of Plenty…they ain’t kidding!

I haven’t had as much luck this year with regular old chanterelles, although I have seen signs of them several times in spots I have found them before, although no jackpot sized collections so far this year. I have brought home enough for dinner on a few occasions this summer so far though. Not too shabby.

The fact that I haven’t found any wild edible mushrooms in a few of my more prolific spots this season has me thinking I need to delve deeper into the woods for new spots. I believe there are new mushroom hunters haunting the same spots I go mushroom hunting these days though. I keep finding tell tale signs such as mushrooms uprooted, tipped over and sliced with a knife or stick to test for bruising. It’s really kept me motivated to get out often, and to not fear the rain. It’s a dog eat mushroom world out there…err wait, no those chanterelles aren’t for my dog. Those are mine! Hopefully it rains a bunch soon so a new flush of tasty wild edible mushrooms sprout up from the forest floor.

Wild Edible Mushrooms – Chanterelle Mushroom Mix Fried Up!

These were easy to cook up and super tasty too! Basically just throw a few pats of butter, a few dabs of olive oil, a bit of garlic and the mushrooms in a pan and stir fry them on medium high for about 8-10 minutes, or until desired tenderness. Sometimes with chanterelles, if they are freshy and full of water, it helps to throw them in a dry pan and steam the water out of them, and then add in your add your oil and garlic so it soaks up in the mushroom pretty well. Once in a while I will add a dash of lemon while the mushrooms are cooking to liven up the taste. Chanterelles have a great, rich flavor and are one of my favorite wild edible mushrooms to cook and eat.  Pictured above is a wild edible mushroom fry from last summer that had smooth chanterelles, black trumpet chanterelles, and cinnabar chanterelles! The triumvirate of wild edible mushrooms! It was delicious and I am really hoping it rains soon so I can collect a bunch for this season’s supper table!

Wild Edible Mushrooms – Black Trumpet Chanterelles (well these are a little grey actually…but still tasty fried up on butter!)

I’ll be posting more pictures of chanterelles soon, along with tips on where to find these choice wild edible mushrooms and how to identify them. Stay tuned!