Forest Gold

Day 358: Like the old prospector said, "There's gold in them thar hills!" And there are more chanterelles in that basket than you might think. I know. I ate them all as one lunch fry-up, and was still too full at dinnertime to eat my regular meal. Admittedly, I had to hit three different spots to collect them all, but as is my usual wont, I left enough behind to seed future generations. Mushroomers are very protective when it comes to sharing locations where "forest gold" can be mined. I've lost too many sites when they were discovered by commercial pickers who harvest 'shrooms right down to pea-sized buttons. I probably should have divided this lot into a fry-up plus a bowl of soup, my usual limit for harvesting, but I didn't. I just sauteed them in butter with a little minced garlic, seasoned them with salt and pepper and pigged out.

24-Karat Gold

Day 356: It was an afterthought. The rain stopped and I was in the area so, backache or not, I said, "Y'know, I really ought to go see if there are any chanterelles." It's been a banner autumn in the mycological sense, but even so, I wasn't expecting to find the first buttons less than 100 feet up the hidden trail which eventually takes me to my secret patch. By the time I reached Ground Zero, I had enough for my own dinner and was working on filling a second bag to give to Kevin. True to form, I didn't pick any one spot completely, always leaving a few 'shrooms on both ends of the age spectrum as "seeds" for next year's harvest. It's a practice which has stood me in good stead these many years of collecting from the same spot, as evidenced by this haul. Kevin and Kelli will eat well tonight, and I have a second batch waiting to be fried up for today's lunch.

Allotropa Virgata, Candystick

Day 247: Arguably the showiest of Mount Rainier National Park's mycoheterotrophic species, Allotropa virgata will make any hiker stop in their tracks for a photo. The "canes" may rise as much as 20 inches above the forest floor, and although they're usually seen as single specimens, they do form colonies. Like other obligate mycoheterotrophs, Allotropa virgata is entirely dependent on a mycorrhizal component (Tricholoma magnivelare) which facilitates the plant's uptake of nutrients from the soil. Where the fungus is absent, Candystick will not occur.

In Nature, everything holds hands, a point which becomes more obvious when you study any tightly linked relationship like mycoheterotrophy. As I learn more about these species, a question arises in my mind about the harvesting of edible wild mushrooms. Like any Hobbit worth the name, I do enjoy a meal of chanterelles, morels or boletes, and if I had been possessed of the skills necessary to make a 105% identification of Tricholoma magnivelare, I'd probably have picked the "American matsutake" as well. Fortunately, those skills are not in my repertoire, or I might have been murdering dozens or hundreds of Candysticks by my gluttony. It's a sobering thought.