I love mushrooms. I love to eat them and I love to take them as medicine. I can identify them in pictures. Yet, I wanted to identify them in nature. To wild-craft, to go find mushrooms when I roamed around in the woods. Turkey tail, Trametes Versicolor, was an easy one for me to identify. For some reason that one stood out and spoke to me. Hemlock Reishi also stood out and spoke to me. Otherwise, I was concerned with making a decision, especially with picking and bringing them home. The old toad stool fear of killing someone or being fairly uncomfortable seemed to loom within me.
Things changed when I found Alexander Schwab's book: Mushrooming Without Fear, a Beginner's Guide to Collecting Safe and Delicious Mushrooms. This book is so easy to read and to follow. To begin to identify the mushrooms you find.
Schwab describes that you can see the difference between mushrooms by their gills, tubes, spines or ridges.
There are eight rules about picking mushrooms:
Number 1: Never take a mushroom with gills.
Rule Number 2: Pick mushrooms with tubes, spines and ridges. There are a few exceptions of puffballs, horn of plenty and cauliflower mushrooms.
Rule Number 3: Eat only mushrooms that you are clear about all its identifying factors.
Rule Number 4: Only pick mushrooms that are in perfect condition. If they smell rotten, they are rotten. If they feel soggy, they are soggy.
Rule Number 5: Always wash and cook the mushrooms you found and picked in the woods.
Rule Number 6: Look out before you cut the mushroom. Use a stick to check around the mushroom. There could be other living ones close by. Leave some mycelium, roots, and cover the mycelium with leaves so that another mushroom will grow. Put the same kinds of mushrooms together in your basket, in case there is an odd one.
Rule Number 7: Put your mushrooms in paper bags so that they can breathe. Plastic bags suffocate them.
Rule Number 8: If you are not sure, leave it alone.
The book has individual sections on how to clearly know mushrooms which have tubes, Boletes and Hen of the Woods; mushrooms which have ridges, Chanterelles; mushrooms which have spines, Hedgehog Fungus; and mushrooms that are the exceptions, Puffballs, Horn of Plenty and Cauliflower mushrooms. The book is filled with wonderful pictures that are easy to use as a guide in the woods.
There is other information in the book about different parts of the country where mushrooms grow, the relationship between mushrooms and trees, how to cut your mushrooms, and how to cook them. (The relationship between mushrooms and trees, falling leaves and branches, and similar markings is much interwoven.) There are also a few light pages on the Fly Agaric mushroom.
All in all this book gave me the confidence to find and eat a 3 lb. cauliflower mushroom. Of course, my mate helped too.
Things changed when I found Alexander Schwab's book: Mushrooming Without Fear, a Beginner's Guide to Collecting Safe and Delicious Mushrooms. This book is so easy to read and to follow. To begin to identify the mushrooms you find.
Schwab describes that you can see the difference between mushrooms by their gills, tubes, spines or ridges.
There are eight rules about picking mushrooms:
Number 1: Never take a mushroom with gills.
Rule Number 2: Pick mushrooms with tubes, spines and ridges. There are a few exceptions of puffballs, horn of plenty and cauliflower mushrooms.
Rule Number 3: Eat only mushrooms that you are clear about all its identifying factors.
Rule Number 4: Only pick mushrooms that are in perfect condition. If they smell rotten, they are rotten. If they feel soggy, they are soggy.
Rule Number 5: Always wash and cook the mushrooms you found and picked in the woods.
Rule Number 6: Look out before you cut the mushroom. Use a stick to check around the mushroom. There could be other living ones close by. Leave some mycelium, roots, and cover the mycelium with leaves so that another mushroom will grow. Put the same kinds of mushrooms together in your basket, in case there is an odd one.
Rule Number 7: Put your mushrooms in paper bags so that they can breathe. Plastic bags suffocate them.
Rule Number 8: If you are not sure, leave it alone.
The book has individual sections on how to clearly know mushrooms which have tubes, Boletes and Hen of the Woods; mushrooms which have ridges, Chanterelles; mushrooms which have spines, Hedgehog Fungus; and mushrooms that are the exceptions, Puffballs, Horn of Plenty and Cauliflower mushrooms. The book is filled with wonderful pictures that are easy to use as a guide in the woods.
There is other information in the book about different parts of the country where mushrooms grow, the relationship between mushrooms and trees, how to cut your mushrooms, and how to cook them. (The relationship between mushrooms and trees, falling leaves and branches, and similar markings is much interwoven.) There are also a few light pages on the Fly Agaric mushroom.
All in all this book gave me the confidence to find and eat a 3 lb. cauliflower mushroom. Of course, my mate helped too.
About the Author:
Sydney is the owner of an online business selling medicinal mushrooms, named Cordyceps Reishi Extracts, LLC. In addition to the two medicinal mushrooms that are part of the business name, she also offers chaga mushroom extract, mesima and many, many more.
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