Foraging Milk Cap Mushrooms

[Music] everyone I'm Adam Harrison and today I'm hanging out in oak and beech woods so the smooth bark trees behind me are American beech trees Vegas Grand folia the large trees down there are oak trees in the genus Quercus both of these trees are in the same family of plants which is the fig a CA family and I really like mushroom hunting in these areas because many mushrooms are associated with these trees specifically the milk cap mushrooms now milk cap mushrooms are fantastic because they perform essential ecological roles and all different kinds of ecosystems throughout the world they do this by forming important ecto mycorrhizal mutualistic associations with various tree species not just oak trees not just beech trees but various hardwood trees and various conifer trees also milk cap mushrooms are important nutrient sources for insects for animals and also for humans and interestingly at least five species of milk cap mushrooms have been shown to be sources of naturally occurring rubber now the milk cap mushroom we will be focusing on today is one known as the voluminous latex milky black tip Louisville Lemus now an older field guides as mushroom was known as lactarius Felina so you might still see that being used that's because almost all milk cap mushrooms used to be in that genus lactarius however in recent years that genus has undergone taxonomic revision so one of the gener to come out of that has been black tip Louis so the one we will be focusing on today is an edible mushroom it's a good edible mushroom liked it Louis the lamest the voluminous latex milky I just want to put it out there before we get started that not all milk cat mushrooms are edible some of them are poisonous some of them are edible some of them are benign the edibility of some species is unknown however the one we will be focusing on today like Tiflis bulimics is a good edible mushroom so let's go see if we can find some like tip Louisville Lemus the voluminous latex milk [Music] so right here is an excellent fruiting at the voluminous latex milky mushroom like tip Louisville Lemus one two three four and five all different sizes of small one back here and larger specimens up here you don't always see this many in one particular patch so it must be a really good day these ones are growing mycorrhizae in association with these hardwood trees perhaps an association with this American beech tree select if Lewis is a genus worldwide they're about 150 species that occupy temperate regions subtropical regions and tropical regions preface most interesting is that most species probably occupy tropical regions around the world with tropical Africa being the most species-rich but of course many members of the Latin Luis genus occur here in North America so let's talk about harvesting this mushroom we're gonna harvest this mushroom it's our first time finding it what I encourage you to do is not to cut it at its stalk not yank it up but excavate it carefully this is a good rule of thumb for any wild mushroom with which you're unfamiliar because if it's your first time finding it you want to get all different characteristics all the way up and down the mushroom and the top of the mushroom all the way down to the base of the stock because many key identifying features can be found at the base of the stock I'm not saying this key identifying features at the base of this stock but let's just say we have no idea what this mushroom is I'm not going to rip out my knife and use it to cut the mushroom at this stuff maybe I'll use it to dig down that's actually what I'm going to do cuz I want to see what's going on so there's a bunch right here I'm going to harvest a medium-sized specimen to get the best accurate representation of what this mushroom might be about so I'm going to just dig down carefully making sure I get everything and here we go so as I look at it I can see it there's nothing funky going on at the base of this stock it's not enlarged at the base I don't see mycelial strands at the base there isn't a Sakura vulva at the base either and honestly I didn't expect to see these because I'm very familiar with this genus this group of mushrooms the milk cat mushrooms you don't really see a lot of his key identifying features at the base that's thought but again this is your first time harvesting this mushroom you should go underneath just to see everything from the top of the mushroom all the way down to the base of the stuff once you do become familiar with this mushroom I'm very familiar this mushroom every time afterwards I'm going to just cut it at its stock because I'm only really going to cook up the caps so let's go over some key identifying features of this mushroom so that you can positively identify it in the field first let's look at the cap the cap of the voluminous latex milky is anywhere from one and a half to five inches across it's convex at first though it does flatten out with age and sometimes it becomes funnel shaped in maturity the color of the cap is orangish brown that the color can fade with age and usually it does fade toward the margin of the cap in the mushroom the texture of the cap is dry and somewhat velvety next let's look at the gills this is the fertile surface of the mushroom from where the spores are dispersed the gills in this particular mushroom are closely spaced in sometimes de current meaning these gills somewhat run down the stem these gills are cream-colored and will bruise Brown when handled are scratched and that's a key identifying feature the fact that the gills will bruise in this way looking at the stock of this mushroom we see that it's between two to four inches tall and colored like the cap or sometimes it's a shade or two paler than the cap there is no ring or annulus around the stem and there is no enlarged bass or sack like vulva at the base of the stem either as a milk cat mushroom the voluminous latex milky contains latex that can be seen when the gills are scratched or broken the latex in this particular mushroom is white and abundant so there is copious latex that's exude it from the gills of this mushroom and this latex eventually stains surfaces including the gills Brown keep that in mind that it's stain surfaces including the gills Brown because that's a key identifying feature the taste of the latex exuded by any milk cat mushroom is a way to narrow down the ID and so if you taste the latex in this mushroom it should be mild not hot not peppery but mild the spore print of the voluminous latex milky mushroom is white now another way to positively identify this mushroom is to smell it I'm gonna put your nose right where the gills are underneath the cap of the mushroom take a nice good whiff of this mushroom because it smells fishy has a strong aroma of fish right under the cap of the mushroom and you're going to smell that whenever you bring it home you're gonna smell in your bag you're gonna smell in the fridge because it smells strongly a fish it's not a bad thing that's just how you positively identify this mushroom along with all this key identifying characteristics now it probably won't smell against one of you cooked it because honestly when I cook this mushroom it doesn't really smell like fish it's a strong tasting mushroom in my opinion but doesn't really taste like fish so that smell should dissipate but give it a good whiff and one of the key identifying features of the voluminous latex milk is that it smells like fish so after you go through all those key identifying characteristics you should have no problem finding and identifying this mushroom there might be a few look-alikes one of the choice edible look likes is one that I did a video on very very recently and that one is like tip Lewis Highgrove from Roy Dee's the high gras forest milky that one looks like this one it's another milk cap mushroom but the gills are more widely spaced apart doesn't smell like fish and the gills shouldn't stay in brown at least readily another look-alike which really looks like this one but it is edible is liked if Lewis Cora gets the corrugated milky mushroom looks just like this however the cap is much more wrinkled much more corrugated so a couple other ways to find this mushroom de+ identify it notice its growth habit it's growing scattered or gregarious lee sometimes it'll grow just by itself you might just see one or two rarely if ever does it grow in dense clusters so this one doesn't really form a clustered habit this one tends to grow summer through early fall in association with hardwood trees but also conifer trees and here in North America year the best luck finding the blue minutes late x milky in Eastern North America so just a few final thoughts regarding the taxonomy associated with the voluminous latex milky mushroom so this mushroom was first described in 1821 in Sweden as Agaricus philemon by swedish botanist in mycologist elias magnus fries of course since then it's undergone taxonomic revision for a long time as I mentioned before it was known as lactarius Philebus it's newest latin name is Lac Tiflis Philebus and the newest research suggests that that name actually represents a species complex because this mushroom has been reported to grow all over the world and your in Asia in Mexico and Guatemala in here in Eastern North America and these species differ somewhat macro morphologically speaking and also microscopically speaking but we call them all like tipless Bolinas so there might be a lot of cryptic and pseudo cryptic species hiding out under that name however if you find this mushroom in the field you go through all this key identifying characteristics and they all match up you can confidently call this one Lac tiflis Valley miss or say it's part of the lac tipless beau Lemus group now a few words regarding the ED ability of this mushroom this mushroom is edible and good when cooked that fishy smell does dissipate and it does taste somewhat nutty and it does have a strong mushroom flavor whenever you do cook this mushroom and eat it now in the literature there is at least one report of toxicity associated with this mushroom it was acute pancreatitis associated with consumption of my tipless valley miss but that was a rare instance I don't know of too many more poisoning reports almost everybody who cooks in each of this mushroom can tolerate it just fine so this is your first time finding this mushroom make sure you can positively identify it cook it well and start small so right now I'm gonna show you what you can do with these milk cat mushrooms as you can see the voluminous latex milky exudes a copious amount of white latex especially when you slice and prepare these mushrooms and the brown staining reactions are really apparent on the gills and on the exposed flesh I'm going to make a simple sauteed meal with the milk cat mushrooms featuring other ingredients including a fresh chicken mushroom that I found earlier in the day and this one is late to poor soul furious I also have shredded broccoli and carrots onions and garlic over medium heat I'll first add butter then I'll add the onion to give that a good stir once the onions are coated with butter I'll add chicken of the woods and I add this early on because it requires more cooking it's a polypore mushroom and even though I harvested this specimen when it was young I still like to cook the chicken mushroom very well after a few minutes I'll then add in the milk cat mushrooms and give that a stir a few minutes later I'll incorporate the chopped broccoli and carrots into the meal and stir that around then I'll add in the garlic I really like adding salt and pepper to my mushroom dishes so I'll add a little bit of both and finally to deglaze the pan I'll add in coconut aminos and that's it the whole dish cooked for about 10 minutes which is plenty of time to make sure both the chicken mushroom and the milk cap mushrooms are cooked well though not to the point of drying out they might be wondering about the fishy smell of the milk cap mushrooms because obviously if you're watching this video you have no idea how this meal smells well the smell is definitely apparent when I was chopping the milk cap mushrooms though the smoke quickly went away while the mushrooms are being cooked so you don't really have to worry about any fishy aroma coming from a meal made from these specific milk cap mushrooms nor do you have to worry about your meal tasting like fish of course you can experiment and cook these any way you want just remember that if it's your first time eating lected blissfully miss start small and cook well now of course the voluminous latex milky mushroom isn't just here on earth to support us humans it's doing a lot of fantastic things for the land as a mycorrhizal fungus it provides its host plants the beech trees the oak trees conifer trees with important nutrients including nitrogen and phosphate it also increases the stress resistance of the host to drought to salinity to heavy metals and to route pathogens and in return for the beneficial effects on nutrient uptake the host plants transfer between 4 to 20% of all of the photosynthetically fixed carbon back to the voluminous latex milky mushroom animals utilize these nutrients insects utilize these nutrients and these nutrients are recycled continuously throughout this ecosystem helping to make this land look as good as it does today thank you so much for watching this video I truly appreciate it as always if you want to stay in touch I encourage you to subscribe to the YouTube channel you could head on over to learn your land come sign up for the email newsletter or follow me on social media at learn in the land thanks again for watching see you in the next [Music] you

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 68,774

Keywords: Learn Your Land, Foraging, Mushrooms, Wild Mushrooms, Lactarius, Lactifluus, volemus, Bradleys Mushroom, Milk Cap Mushroom, Fungus, Fungi, Fungal, Paul Stamets, Wild Food, Wild Edibles, Medicinal Mushrooms, Nature, Primitive Skills, Permaculture, Hunting, Fishing, Backpacking, Outdoors, Cooking, Health, Adam Haritan, Western Pennsylvania, Edible Plants, Medicinal Plants

Id: 9DtvnZ-r2OE

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 18 2018