It's Not Chicken Of The Woods... But What Is It?

[Music] greetings everyone I'm Adam Harrison and I'm super excited today to share with you in this video a wild mushroom that's not too commonly encountered it's actually considered to be somewhat rare but when it is encountered many people might confuse it for chicken of the woods and that's a mistake I do not want you to make and so if you're unfamiliar with chicken of the woods also known as the chicken mushroom this is a fleshy polypore mushroom that grows directly on trees sometimes it fruits a little away from trees but it's fruiting from buried wood it's got an orangish cap and on the underside depending on the species it has either yellow pores bright yellow pores or whites to picha spores into many people chicken of the woods is a choice edible mushrooms so it's delicious to many people and I really like chicken of the woods but the mushroom I'm about to show you looks like chicken of the woods to some degree but it's not so which particular wild mushroom I talking about come on take a walk with me I'll show you [Music] it's right over there on the fallen oak tree you could see these orange polypore mushrooms fruiting directly on that log and they kind of look like chicken of the would move from this angle right here if I was just walking through the woods especially had a swift pace without getting closer inspection I might just assume that that's chicken of the wood because not too many things look like that in nature the things that do we usually call them chicken of the woods now before we take a closer look I just got to give credit to one person for showing me these mushrooms and that person is John plush key John plush he is a founding member of the western Pennsylvania mushroom Club I was hanging out with him the other night and he pointed me towards these mushrooms personally I had never seen them in person I've seen many photographs of them but remember what I said they're considered to be somewhat rare so I knew that I had to see them at least to take a photograph and then I thought oh I got to film a video on this because they kind of do look like chicken of the woods so thanks John polisky for showing me this mushroom spot and thanks for not harvesting all these mushrooms as well so let's take a closer inspection and see which mushrooms these are okay so check out these big beautiful wild mushrooms something kind of look like chicken of the woods I mean they certainly did from a distance once you get a little closer maybe not so much especially if you're familiar with harvesting a lot of chicken mushrooms but we're going to get into the differentiating features in just a couple of moments so there's two big beautiful specimens right here there was actually a third one which is now on the ground all sliced up and why is this one sliced up well remember when I said John polisky was in the area and he pointed this mushroom out to me so I thank John polisky well there's a mutual friend of ours that I have to thank as well and his name is Garret Taylor and Garret was in this area as well and he actually harvested some of this specimen to bring back to the identification table at our monthly meeting with the western Pennsylvania mushroom Club and he was kind enough to let me apply some potassium hydroxide to the cap surface to see the color change so Thank You Garrett and thank you John for leaving some of these behind so which mushroom is this I know I keep asking you which mushroom is this and you probably haven't given me an answer yet so I'm going to give you an answer and maybe it's an answer you won't like because I don't have a common name for this mushroom I don't know of any common name for it so the best I can do is give you a Latin name that I'll use for the rest of the video and that Latin name is a palapa list Croesus this is the latin name that you're going to see and most field guides this is the latin name that most people use when talking about this mushroom this is the latin name that you're going to see on most mushroom identification forums however in a couple of minutes i'm going to change that latin name to a different one because according to newer research this mushroom probably isn't considered to be a hapless mushroom it's probably in another genus altogether but because most people call this hapless Croesus i'm just going to use that name for the next couple of minutes to bear with me until we talk about the taxonomy of this particular species now what's really interesting about half a la Perlas Croesus and this is something that i mentioned a few times already in this video is that it's considered to be somewhat rare and even critically endangered specifically in european forests and these aren't my words these are published words in the scientific literature so this mushroom just doesn't grow here in North America it also grows in Europe and in both continents this mushroom is considered to be rare why would this mushroom be considered rare like what makes a mushroom rare why are other mushrooms more commonly encountered well as you can see this mushroom is decomposing wood and this mushroom is said to be a slow grower it takes a while for the mycelium of this mushroom to develop and it's considered to be a late-stage decomposer so other mushrooms get into the wood first and start the decomposition process early on in the process then this mushroom can take over later it seems like the earlier fungi might be able to out-compete hapless Croesus also this mushroom typically decomposes older oak trees and chestnut trees we certainly don't have a lot of older chestnut trees left at all or even stumps or logs or anything like that so that substrate is gone for this mushroom but also we don't have a lot of older oak trees either you can tell that this is an older oak tree right here it's a rather large tree this tree was probably at least 100 years before it fell down so this mushroom typically inhabits older trees specifically in that Fugazi a family which would be oak trees and chestnut trees so what are some key identifying features of half a lot less Croesus how can we be absolutely sure that what we're finding in the wild if we're so lucky to find it is hapless Croesus and not something else like chicken of the woods as you can tell by looking at it these mushrooms contain semicircular orange colored fruiting bodies and these fruiting bodies do not have any stock so the mycological term used to describe a stockless mushroom is Cecil s es si le in the orange color of hapless croci it's very similar to the orange color that you might see in a lobster mushroom if you're familiar with finding lobster mushrooms typically specimens can grow up to eight inches across that's what's most reported in the literature but what's interesting about these mushrooms are clearly bigger than eight inches across this one right here is probably at least one foot across and I remember when John pushy told me about this particular spot he said not only are there hapless Croesus mushrooms but there are huge specimens ones that are rarely encountered so not only is this mushroom hard to find in the wild because it doesn't fruit that often but it's rare that you find a fruiting body this big so this is one of the biggest specimens that you'll probably ever see the texture of this mushroom is somewhat soft when fresh though it does become Corky er when dry and the surface of the cap is sometimes occasionally finally velvety now this mushroom is a polypore mushroom so the underside of the cap contains numerous pores these pores are angular and somewhat large so you don't need a loop or hand lens in order to see these pores and the color of the underside is this beautiful reddish orange color the spore print of hapless Croesus is white what's really crazy is that you could see the spores coming out right now it's injecting its spores right in front of me it looks like clouds of smoke but these are sports coming out I'm going to try to capture this on film that you can see it you're not always going to see this with a lot of mushrooms will see it with some mushrooms you don't always see it with polypore mushrooms either so this is kind of a rare opportunity to observe these clouds of spores just coming out underneath a palapas Croesus now because we've been talking about shaking of the woods so many times throughout this video I think we need to differentiate between this mushroom apple apple as Croesus and chicken of the woods so remember chicken of the woods represents a lot of different species in that laetiporus genus the ones that commonly grow here in eastern North America on deciduous wood would be late the porcell furious and also late the poor Cincinnatus both of them are edible mushrooms for most people some people can't tolerate them but most people can tolerate them whenever you do cook them now late the poorest mushrooms are typically thinner fleshed compared to a palapa as Croesus I mean this thing is rather thick right here chicken of the woods typically thinner flesh but the key difference is on the underside when you look at the underside of a chicken of the woods mushroom the poor surface is much more closely spaced together you don't really see all these pores with your naked eye unless you're using a hand lens or unless you're using a loop whenever you look at hapless Croesus these pores are more angular they're more spread apart so you can really see the pores spread apart unhappily awful as Croesus also the color of the underside is different with a palapa less Croesus the underside is this reddish orangish color with chicken of the woods mushrooms depending on the species if you're looking at late to pour salt furious on deciduous wood that underside will be bright yellow especially when it's fresh whenever you're looking at late the poor Cincinnatus another chicken of the woods mushroom associated with deciduous wood the underside of that chicken of the wood species is white or peach ish so Happel Oppel as Croesus bright reddish orangish underside with chicken of the woods either yellow or white or peach ish depending on the species also the ecological roles of the two fungi are different now both of them act as a pro tropes or parasitic fungi so if they're growing on living trees they are considered to be mild parasites if these are growing on dead trees that the tree has already fallen over like we see right here with this fallen oak tree then they act a saprotrophic fungi and they're breaking down some of the woody material and some of the carbohydrates but the ecological roles are a little different with a pilobolus Croesus this mushroom is considered to be a white rot fungus and white rot fungi through the room I see Liam through the enzyme secreted by the mycelium are able to degrade lignin in the wood to a smaller degree some of the carbohydrates found in the cell walls including cellulose and hemicellulose with light the poorest species which are chicken mushrooms or chicken of the woods those are considered to be brown rot fungi and brown rot fungi through their enzymatic secretions in their mycelium attack cellulose but they do not significantly degrade lignin so the lignin is modified but not considerably removed and the work of brown rot fungi results in a brownish residue in the wood that breaks into cubical fragments now there is one more mushroom that I'll compare half a la Perlas Croesus to and that is another member of the habilis genus which would be kappa lopoliths midgel ins or half a la Perlas rue de lijn the tender nesting polypore now I recently talked about the tender nesting polypore in depth in a video titled ten wild mushrooms we talk about beliefs and polypore mushrooms and toothed fungi and others so you can watch that video to learn more about the tender nesting polypore it features more brownish colors overall it's got a brownish underside and it's a poor surface so it is a polypore mushroom but the key difference between a palapa less rude islands and this one right here hapless Croesus can be seen whenever you apply potassium hydroxide or Koh to any of the surfaces when you apply potassium hydroxide to the tender nesting polypore a palapa Liz root islands all surfaces will turn lilac or lavender colored it's one of the few mushrooms that will do that whenever you apply potassium hydroxide through hapless Croesus it turns a deep red color on all surfaces so deep red color on hapless Croesus and a lilac or lavender color with half a waffle is brutal and if you have potassium hydroxide just apply it to the surfaces and you will see instantly which mushroom you have okay so before we get to taxonomy of hapless Croesus let's discuss edibility or in edibility or toxicity of this mushroom because i realize i've been talking for a long time without mentioning anything about the edibility status of this particular species but there's way more to this mushroom than just whether can you eat it or not and I wanted to cover that information first because it's still really fascinating so thanks for making it this far let's discuss edibility so if we assume that this mushroom is still in that hapless genus we might be cautious about consuming this mushroom because a palapa was rue de lins or hapless New Zealand's that mushroom that we just discussed the tender nesting polypore tender nesting fungus is toxic it's one of the few toxic polly pores because it contains a compound in significant concentrations known as pelipper ik acid and Perec acid can lead to central nervous system dysfunction it can lead to kidney dysfunction and liver dysfunction if ingested in significant quantities and if the 40% of the dry weight of the tender nesting polypore is plethoric acid so this mushroom is in the hapless genus we might be cautious about consuming it because it might contain plepper acid so does it contain a toxic compound in significant concentrations well I haven't really found too much information on it it doesn't seem like it's reported in the literature all the information about toxicity associated with a palapa list is just a palapa less Ruta lens or hapless vigilant not this one right here I can't find anything in the books I the people I've looked at the scientific literature we just can't find a lot of information on any pelipper ik acid found within half a waffle as Croesus so what I'm going to say is don't eat this mushroom because we just don't know almost every field guide and most people that you talk to will say that this mushroom is inedible don't eat it because it's just much too tough it's much too Corky especially as it ages even when it's young though it's still much tougher than a chicken of the woods species you can see how thick these fruiting bodies are right here so this mushroom is inedible and potentially suspect but we really don't know how much or any pelipper acid this mushroom really contains okay so now on to the really really really good stuff a taxonomy of hapless Croesus and if you've made it this far in the video then I really applaud you you stepped through a lot of information a lot of detailed information in order to hear about its current name in order to hear what this mushroom might be related to so its current name according to most people as hapless Croesus that's the name we've been using throughout this video and over the past couple of centuries this mushroom has been shifted around various general dating back to the 1700s we see this mushroom has been in the bully destinos so this has been a belief mushroom we see it's been in the Taira my C's genus the pelipper is genus even the ina notice genus ina notice houses the chaga mushroom in 1933 this mushroom was given the name hapless Croesus but before that in 1920 this mushroom was given the name or rant the pooris Croesus and or rant means orange and Croesus we didn't even talk about Croesus the Croesus means saffron colored because the saffron colored or orange color of this mushroom well an interesting article came out in December of 2016 in the journal my coquí's it in this journal the researchers said that Kappa lopoliths Croesus isn't in hapless genus that hapless in the strictest sense contains about 4 species and this mushroom should be a rant the poorest Croesus that former name that was given in 1920 and what's interesting is that a rant the poorest and hapless are in different families so a rant the poorest is in a family known as the marula AC a family and hapless is in the fan or ok Pacey a family two different families but they're still related in that they're in the same order of fungi which is the pelipper Ali's order so it seems that the most currently accepted Latin name is a rant the poorest Croesus not Apple Apple as Croesus even though rant the poorest was an older name given in 1920 and so most people will still call us Apple Apple as Croesus and maybe it will be shifted back into a palapa list in the near future so it seems that this fungus is in a current state of taxonomic flux and that's true with a lot of other wild mushrooms but honestly you can call this whatever you want you can call it whatever you want the mushroom doesn't really care even if you make up a common name that's perfectly fine with me because you know what even all Latin names are made up as well so call whatever you want a rant the poorest Croesus might be the most currently accepted latin name but if you want to talk to a lot of people about this mushroom they're probably going to recognize hapless Croesus as the current name but like I said call it whatever you want so we covered a lot of information about this incredibly fascinating fungus right here that some people call hapless Croesus some people call a rant the poorest Croesus again you can make up a common name for it maybe orange creamsicle orange pancake on an oak tree whatever you want to call it it's perfectly fine with me and it's probably fine with a mushroom as well if you do find and consider yourself lucky because it's considered to be rare and critically endangered in some countries and I don't see it too often like I said this is the first time I've seen it when I say I don't see it too often I mean I don't even see a lot of photographs of it because people aren't really reporting findings of this mushroom so I'm really excited to find it today thank you again John push q thank you again Gary Taylor for pointing out this mushroom and leaving some behind remember this is not chicken of the woods it's not laetiporus sulphureus it's not late the poor Cincinnatus it's either half a la pêche Croesus or perhaps even a rant the pooris Pro see is an orangish shelf-like polypore mushroom that typically grows on decaying oak trees or chestnut trees typically the larger oak trees or chestnut trees so thank you so much for watching this video I appreciate it if you learned something and you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel feel free to subscribe to the learn your land YouTube channel you can also head on over to learn your land comments sign up for the email newsletter we can also stay in touch on Facebook and Instagram at learn your land thanks again I'll see you in the next video you

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 104,644

Keywords: Adam Haritan, Learn Your Land, Mushroom, Mushroom Hunting, Medicinal Mushrooms, Fungus, Fungi, Foraging, Wild Edibles, Hapalopilus croceus, Plants, Outdoors, Botany, Mycology, Hunting, Fishing, Trapping, Gardening, Backpacking, Primitive Skills, Permaculture, Herbalism, Aurantiporus croceus

Id: ZTaFYdfuaLE

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 26 2019