4 Orange Mushrooms Worth Learning

[Music] greetings everyone I'm Adam Harrington and in this video we are going to discuss orange mushrooms now why would I devote an entire video to orange mushrooms well because that's all I've been finding so right now I'm on the border of an Eastern hemlock forest and while walking around and exploring and looking for a unique and interesting trees I inevitably encountered mushrooms but not just any mushrooms all four mushrooms that I found in a row within a 30-minute window were oddly enough orange so ultimately I don't think I had much control over this at all orange mushrooms appeared and I took it as a sign from the great beyond to film them and even though we haven't had a lot of rain lately the hemlock forests tend to stay cool and moist and shaded and these conditions are very conducive for mushroom growth now just as a disclaimer there are lots of orange mushrooms and kingdom fungi but in this video I'm only going to cover the four orange species that I recently found it's a little too early for chanterelles and hedgehog mushrooms and many orange lactarius mushrooms so I'm not going to feature those mushrooms in this video and the hundreds of other orange mushrooms in kingdom fungi so if I forget to include your favorite orange mushroom I apologize but I still think you will have fun learning some fascinating things about the orange mushrooms that I did recently fine sound good let's begin [Music] to kick things off we are going to start with a mushroom that you might think you know but there's a good chance that you're not too familiar with it even though it's name is well known within mushroom foraging circles so we're talking about chicken of the woods also known as the chicken mushroom and you might be wondering why is he talking about chicken of the woods again he always talks about chicken of the woods everyone talks about chicken of the woods well that's a good question and I do have a good answer so we're going to talk about chicken of the woods because there were two special features that characterize this particular species each of which we are going to explore in more depth the first feature is that it grows on conifer trees that's interesting because most mushrooms in the lake too porous genus here in North America grow on the wood of angiosperms the second interesting feature of this particular species is that it is said to be more likely to make someone gastrointestinal ill after consuming it compared to the hardwood loving chicken mushrooms so what's going on with this particular species well most mushrooms in the late the poorest genus here in North America are known as chicken of the woods or the chicken mushroom or sulfur shelf all chicken mushrooms were once considered to be one single species late to poor's sulphureus and actually the original name for chicken of the woods was boletus sulphureus which was designated in 1789 up until the late 1990s there were only two species of laetiporus recognized here in North America laetiporus sulphureus which included the chicken mushrooms and another one known as late the poorest purses I&S in more recent years though ample work has been conducted on the laetiporus genus so that there are now at least six late to poor species recognized in north america in the north eastern half of the United States and in the Great Lakes region most people routinely encounter to plate the poor species that grow in the wood of angiosperms later pourcel furious and late to poor Cincinnatus but there's another species that grows in these regions that grows on the wood of conifer trees this chicken of the woods species is late too porous her audiences named after the Huron Mountains in the Upper Peninsula region of Michigan where the type specimen was collected and described late the poorest your audience is almost identical too late to pourcel furious it grows in overlapping shelf-like clusters it contains bright orange caps and bright yellow pores on the undersurface the key distinction is that late the poorest here on e ANSYS grows on the wood of conifers in the Northeast and Great Lakes region especially on Eastern hemlock trees and especially on older larger diameter trees so you are more likely to find the species in more mature forests now in addition to its unique substrate there is another interesting feature of this mushroom laetiporus here audiences is said to be more likely than a hardwood derived chicken mushroom to make someone ill after consuming it so what's all that about well as far as I know there's no definitive evidence or research proving that conifer derives chicken mushrooms are more likely to make people ill after consuming them but if you spend some time in mushroom communities if you look through some of the mushroom Facebook groups if you read some of the commentaries written in mushroom foraging books you will encounter the caveat that conifer derives chicken mushrooms either should not be consumed due to its ability to make people sick or that it should be consumed with caution now I ate this particular late too porous here on ANSYS and I experienced no ill effects whatsoever in fact I found it to be very tasty and I would consume more of this mushroom if I saw it more often but I don't find it as frequently as I find the other two hardwood loving chicken mushrooms but when I cooked this mushroom I took all the necessary precautions that I recommend to anyone eating any new edible species I harvested it when it was young I transported it and stored it well until I consumed it I started with a small amount I cooked this small amount well so at least for 12 minutes with some fat in a cast-iron skillet and I waited 24 hours before consuming anymore as I said I experienced no ill effects after eating this mushroom and if you are lucky enough to find late to poorest here on the Ensis I encourage you to take all this precautions that I just mentioned just to ensure that you don't experience any negative effects because it seems that according to many people this mushroom is edible but it's more likely to disagree with people's digestive systems compared to hard wood derived chicken mushrooms but also keep in mind that even hard wood derived chicken mushrooms can make people sick not everybody tolerates chicken of the woods some people can't tolerate it no matter what it's growing on so keep that in mind before consuming it if it's your first time consuming and late to poor species another orange mushroom that's popping up quite prolifically right now is the orange mussina mussina lee ayianna now it's no surprise that this mushroom is orange because many Mycenae mushrooms are brightly coloured and many my cena mushrooms are orange but this one my cena Liana is awarded by many people the title of the orange my cena so that my cena genus is rather large worldwide they're estimated to be at least 500 species probably more and almost all of them are saprotrophic meaning they decompose organic material but a few species are either parasitic or mycorrhizal so you'll find these species decomposing forest litter conifer wood angiosperm wood you'll see them on logs and sticks and stumps and arising from the soil members within this genus typically have small fruiting bodies thin caps in white spores and interestingly many species in the my cena genus are bioluminescent meaning either the my Celia or fruiting bodies or both structures emit light now my cena mushrooms aren't that easy to identify to the species level but this one the orange my cena is easily identified it grows in dense clusters on the wood of broadleaf deciduous trees so even though I found this cluster in a hemlock forest it was growing from a fallen hardwood tree when fresh these mushrooms are incredibly bright orange though they will fade with age and when you look under the cap you see a very distinctive feature of the orange my cena its gills are margin eight which means that the margins of the gills are colored differently than the faces of the gills look closely and you will see that the margins of the orange my cena are darker orange compared to the sides of the gills which are lighter in color and if you're wondering about the meaning of the species namely a yana it comes from a delaware born merchants turn amateur botanist named thomas gibson leah who spent much of his later life collecting plants and mushrooms particularly in cincinnati ohio though he did live in pittsburgh pennsylvania for a while so to be clear this mushroom wasn't named by him it's not like he named this mushroom after him this mushroom was given the name lee ayianna by a friend of his in addition to the title orange my cena people also sometimes refer to this mushroom as leas orange bonnet and the golden fairy helmet this mushroom is not known to be edible but it's orange yellow pigment which is known as lee ayianna full Veen has been studied for its antibiotic properties again this brightly colored orange mushroom fruits prolifically in dense clusters on wood typically after the morel season at least here in the Northeast and it will continue to periodically appear throughout the rest of the growing season moving forward and staying within the my cena genus let's talk about a common pinkish reddish orange my cena mushroom that's too easy to overlook now you may be wondering how is it easy to overlook an orange mushroom especially in a forest full of greens and browns well it's easy to overlook an orange mushroom when that orange mushroom is incredibly tiny so now we're talking about a mushroom known as my cena acicular also known as the orange bonnet and the coral spring my cena and interestingly its small size is one of its key features so if you find a very tiny my seen a mushroom with this kind of orange coloration consider comparing your specimen to my cena acicular this mushroom contains a pinkish orange to oranges red cap that's only about a quarter inch in diameter at maturity this mushroom has a yellowish stock many times covered with little dots and you will find white to yellowish gills on the underside of the cap this mushroom grows from forest debris typically in areas that receive lots of shade and areas that remain moist and I found these particular mushrooms next to a fallen hardwood tree along a stream and if you are wondering about the species name a sick EULA it comes from the word Akos a c us which means needle and its suffix cula is diminutive so altogether a sick you'll amines little needle which is appropriate based on this mushrooms general morphology the edibility of this mushroom is unknown but because of its small size it wouldn't provide much food value anyway so it's best left in the forest or taken home if you are interested in studying it further so the coral spring my cena a tiny orange mushroom that's easy to overlook but once you find it it isn't too difficult to acquire a positive identification based on the features we just went over and the last orange fungus that we will discuss in this video is one that's a bit different from the previous mushrooms that we discussed and that this one is in a completely different phylum of fungi so taxonomically speaking it's different and we can tell just based on the general physical appearance or morphology of this fungus it doesn't quite look like a mushroom in the traditional sense of the word because it doesn't have a spreading cap and it doesn't really have a prominent stalk and fungi that look like this are colloquially referred to as cup fungi and as I mentioned cup fungi are in a completely different phylum or division of fungi chicken of the woods in the tomb I see no mushrooms are taxonomically placed within the basidiomycota division of fungi this orange cup fungus is placed within the ascomycota division of fungi which is the same division of fungi that houses morels truffles and brewers yeast that's used in wine and beer making so this particular ascomycete is appropriately given the name of the orange peel fungus because when you find it it looks like you found someone's discarded orange peel on the ground its genus name is allure which comes from the Greek word a your own meaning flower and it probably refers to the powdery or mealy texture that can be seen on the outer surface of these fruiting bodies at least when the fungi are younger and a species name or Anthea means gilded or golden referring to the brilliant color of the fungus which is actually more orange than golden now this fungus has a broad distribution and according to this map on mushroom observer we can see that there are reports of this fungus concentrated largely on the western and eastern sides of North America and also in Europe with scattered populations elsewhere the orange-peel fungus grows either scattered or in dense groupings in disturbed areas including areas along trails gravelly sites roadsides and garden beds this fungus is listed as being edible though I admit I've never eaten it because it just doesn't seem that enticing to me from a culinary perspective but interestingly there's a lot of research on one particular lectin isolated from this fungus and lectins are carbohydrate binding proteins that are found in a wide range of species including plants animals and microorganisms now the specific lectin found within the orange peel fungus is cleverly known as AAL or Illyria or anthea lectin and this lectin is currently being studied for its potential role in detecting cancer because of its binding properties a al recognizes and binds to specific molecules that are associated with several types of cancer including liver cancer so a al is not used to treat cancer but instead it's used to detect cancer biomarkers so the orange peel fungus a common saprotrophic ascomycete associated with disturbed areas it's very easy to identify it's somewhat easy to see because of its orange coloration and I encourage you to get out and look for it on your next walk either through the forest or perhaps even in your own backyard so we discussed four orange mushrooms that I recently found and again there are many orange mushrooms that are out there and there are many more that will be popping up in the upcoming weeks not only to be talking physical descriptions but we also talked a lot about word meanings in the ED Amala G of a lot of the genus and species names and this is something that I encourage you to do if you're interested in improving your mushroom identification skills because in most cases either the genus or species name will tell you something very important about that mushroom in many cases something about the physical appearance of that mushroom it'll help you remember that and be able to recall that information later on and one way to brush up on your entomology and to learn word meanings associated with mushrooms is to pick up this fantastic resource called a mushroom word guide by Rob Halleck so Rob sent me this book months ago so this shout-out is long overdue he gifted me this book generously and he did not say hey can you promote this book on your youtube channel not at all I just thought I'd do it because it's a fantastic resource and I'm so grateful to have this on hand so many word meanings in this book all pertaining to mushrooms and even to plants in some cases and you could also find his work on Facebook he's got a great Facebook group called mycological word of the day a lot of people in that groups a lot of content updated daily so check that out check out this book you could find it online a mushroom word guide by Rob Halleck again Rob thanks for sending me this book truly appreciate it I've used it a lot and thank you for watching this video I hope you learned something about orange mushrooms I encourage you to get out explore your woods see which orange mushrooms are popping up near you if you'd like to stay up to date with my work head on over to learn your landcom you can sign up for the email newsletter I send out an email periodically you could also follow me on social media at learn your land on Instagram and Facebook and of course if you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel feel free to do that thanks for watching this video again I truly appreciate it and I'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 70,637

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Id: d5Ot4ARr_7c

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2020