On The Hunt For Autumn Mushrooms

[Music] greetings everyone i'm madame hairatan and today i'm hanging out in the woods looking for autumn mushrooms now it's been pretty dry the past couple of weeks especially here in western Pennsylvania and extended dry spells can certainly put a damper on the mushroom hunting season however not all hope is lost in these instances because if you're in the right habitat and you time your hunt perfectly you can still find wild mushrooms even choice wild edible mushrooms so the particular area that I'm exploring today seems pretty promising as you can see it contains a variety of mixed open woods containing red oaks and white oaks and tulip trees sugar maple trees hickory trees Eastern hemlock trees and others if you're interested in seeing what kinds of mushrooms we can find in these particular woods and take a walk with me and I'll show you [Music] whenever you're looking for mushrooms any time of the year I strongly encourage you to know your trees learn how to identify trees learn which mushrooms are associated with which trees this is especially important during periods of dry weather because at least in my experiences you're more likely to find mushrooms growing directly on trees or a little away from trees compared to the mushrooms that grow terrestrially of course there are many exceptions but it's been my experience is that you're likely to find more mushrooms grown directly on trees even if it's really really dry outside so if you look around here you can see there are a couple different tree species the thinner one out front is an Eastern hemlock tree but I want you to turn your attention towards the one that's leaning this is a white oak tree Quercus Alba and there are a lot of mushrooms associated with oak trees and that's why I recommend that everybody who's hunting mushrooms learn oak trees learn which oak trees grow in your area because a variety of mycorrhizal fungi grow in association with oaks saprotrophic fungi even parasitic fungi now there's one particular mushroom species that grows in association with oak trees late summer through fall maybe you know which one I'm talking about maybe you don't let's go take a closer look and see if it's actually growing in association with this tree right now okay so check out this beautiful wild mushroom right here fruiting at the base of this living white oak tree this is one of my favorite wild edible mushrooms if you are unfamiliar with this particular species I encourage you to pay attention because I really want you to go look for this one if you live in an area where it grows so if you're in North America it grows in eastern North America primarily late summer through fall so this is the maitake mushroom also known as hen of the woods sheepshead grifoll a frond dosa it's one of the best ones that's out there not only for edible purposes but there's some good quality medicinal research on it as well and what's interesting about this mushroom is that many times you hear about it growing a little away from the basis of oak trees whether they're living oak trees or dead oak trees this one's fruiting directly on the tree so this is not a rare exception many times you'll find it growing here as well but oak trees aren't the only substrates for this mushroom this year I did find am I talking mushroom growing directly on a living yellow birch tree betcha 'la Allegheny ANSYS it's the first time I've ever seen this mushroom growing on a living yellow birch tree I've also seen it grow on American beech trees are a little away from American beech trees I've seen it grow away from cherry trees black cherry trees and I've seen pictures of the growing in association with black walnut trees so it doesn't just prefer oak trees but if you're new to foraging for maitake mushrooms I would spend time looking at oak forest looking for the bigger oak trees now to harvest this maitake mushroom I'm going to use a knife and the knife is one of the number one tools that I recommend any mushroom hunter bring along with them to ensure clean harvests and before I harvest this one I want to give a quick shout out to somebody who was incredibly generous with their time and with their talents because they built me a custom knife that I could use the harvest wild mushroom so a knife maker by the name of Rob from rs knife forks reached out to me on Instagram a couple months ago and as a way of expressing gratitude for the work that I was doing he said he was going to build me a custom knife so we started talking about what I preferred and knives when harvesting mushrooms and about a month and a half ago he sent this to me in the mail and honestly this is one of the nicest things that anybody has ever done to help support the work that I do I absolutely love this knife I've had nothing but good experiences so far and I'm sure the good experiences will last now the blade itself is made out of nitro V steel it's got a thumb hole for easy opening it's got a flipper tab for easy opening it's about five inches when closed and the blade itself is about four inches it's got a pocket clip so that you don't lose it and the whole thing is incredibly durable now Rob didn't say hey if I build you a knife will you promote my work on your YouTube channel not at all it's quite the opposite he's very humble expected nothing in return and I thought at the very least I can at least give him a shout-out give him a plug on the learn your land YouTube channel and so if you're interested in custom built knives especially if you're a mushroom forager because knives are incredibly important tools whenever you're forging wild mushrooms to ensure clean harvest and also to dig around mushrooms to make sure that you're getting the whole entire thing so you can analyze it from top to bottom definitely check out our s knife Forks providing his Facebook page and also his Instagram account you could check out all his beautiful work there so thank you rob for the work that you're doing and for everybody else watching this video definitely check out Rob's work so I'm going to use this night the harvest is maitake mushroom and I'm going to be selective about which parts I harvest there's actually a poor quality specimen right down here it doesn't look that fresh so I'm going to leave this behind I'll leave some of these smaller pieces behind as well I'm just going to take my knife and slide it down and harvest this beautiful part right here and it comes off really really easily with this nice so thanks Rob and look at that a perfect incision of this beautiful maitake mushroom you can see the colors are varied it's kind of brown it's kind of gray to some white on it as well on the underside there's some part that I'll slice off with this knife I don't want to bring most of that home this specimen right here is enough for maybe two or three meals there's not that much right here I realize many people are finding dozens and dozens and dozens of pounds of my pocket mushroom and it's not uncommon to find many growing around a single tree this is the only clusters that I'm finding an association with this living oak but I'm very grateful to at least find this amount today so thanks to the maitake mushroom thanks to Rob for the nights that I can easily harvest this maitake mushroom let's go see what else we can find in these woods ok so check out this beautiful tree this is one of those beautiful trees I've seen in these woods so far maybe in my lifetime and these woods actually have quite a few of this particular species so which species is this well could be kind of difficult to tell which species you have when you're looking at a very old tree because it loses a lot of those characteristics that it had when it was young it's kind of like human beings as well so this is a sugar maple tree Acer saccharum it's a really really old sugar maple tree sugar maples are quite common here in Pennsylvania and they can inhabit older growth areas or late successional areas so this is considered to be a late successional species for at least three reasons number one because of its longevity number two because of its ability to regenerate naturally underneath its own canopy and number three because of its high shade tolerance and so whenever you find sugar maples abundant in a particular forest it's not uncommon to see them from the seedling stage all the way to an old-growth stage so this could be considered an old-growth sugar maple tree Acer saccharum I don't know exactly how old this tree is I'll put a nice conservative estimate on it say maybe it's about 200 years it's not much older than that I think I'm safe when I say about 200 years probably a little older than that and as an older growth tree of course older trees are more prone to fungal infections such as the case with this particular tree we've got fungi growing out here we've got some fungi growing at the base as well which species is this well this is a species that really likes to inhabit the heartwood of maple trees specifically sugar maple trees this is the northern tooth clime a codon sept entry annales and climb a kid on stepped entry and Alice literally means northern tooth or northern ladder tooth so step tension Alice means belonging to the north climb a Kadam means ladder tooth tooth because the Fertile structures are teeth on the underside and ladder probably because the caps are stacked like the rungs on a ladder now interestingly when this mushroom was first described centuries ago it was put in the hidden I'm jeanna s-- which is now the hedgehog mushrooms eNOS so I guess it kind of looks like hedgehog mushrooms and that the fertile structures are teeth or spines but now it's in the pelipper Ali's order a fungi so it might be more considered to be a polypore mushroom rather than a toothed mushroom but morphologically speaking when you look at it you see these spines or teeth hanging downwards underneath these white caps now the northern tooth climb a concept entry analysis is unfortunately not considered to be edible it's not considered to be toxic it's just too bitter too tough to ingest now it's role is a parasite it parasitizes the heartwood of living trees this is a living sugar maple tree if you look up at the canopy you could still see leaves on this tree and the heartwood of a tree is the inner layer of the wood and it's said to contain no living cells and it's largely resistant to decay but if there's a breach in the bark then fungal spores can get in they can germinate into the hyphy and mycelium and slowly decompose the heartwood and then the only signs that you'll see on this tree that the heartwood is being decomposed would be hollows or cavities in the tree meaning the interior is haul it out and then occasionally you'll see these fruiting bodies in this case you see the fruiting body of climb a concept entry and Alice the northern tooth now it would be easy to assume that this fungus is bad for this tree or bad for the ecosystem because it's ecologically known as a parasite but interestingly this mushroom and the mycelium as it decomposes the heartwood might be increasing diversity in forests as it decomposes the heartwood provides cavities dens and openings and there are a lot of cavity dwelling animals in nature when you think of woodpeckers you think of wrens you think of owls and even mammals like black bear that rely on cavities in trees for their homes and what's interesting is that whenever you look at highly manicured and managed forests you don't see a lot of the standing snags left behind because people like to remove those because it might look unsightly or it might cause damage if it falls over on a structure and it's understandable in some circumstances but if you remove those standing snags you're removing a lot of homes for a variety of species so the northern tooth has an interesting symbiosis in nature yes it is considered to parasitize living trees but as it does so it also increases the diversity in the forest by providing unique nesting opportunities for a variety of animals that rely on these cavities in dens so the northern to climb a concept entry and Alice and interesting fungus considered to be a parasite beneficial for a wide variety of reasons unfortunately though not considered to be edible for humans but appreciate how beautiful this living sugar maple tree is at the same time I know we already talked about a sugar maple tree Acer saccharum I got to show you another beautiful one remember I said these woods are loaded with these trees loaded relatively speaking it's not like it's incredibly abundant in these woods but every so often you come across these big boys right here or big girls I don't really know but this one's actually dead so this is a snag but because it's still here in these woods it's providing unique nesting opportunities for a variety of species so I'm glad to see it still in these woods and nobody took it away but remember when I said sugar maple trees a late successional species and one of the characteristics of a late successional species is its ability to regenerate naturally underneath its own canopy well right above my head that tree right there is a younger sugar maple tree you can see how different it looks compared to this one so there's a lot of younger sugar maple trees in these woods meaning in a couple hundred years hopefully they'll look as big and beautiful as this one now there are animal mushrooms growing on this tree and it took me a while to find any signs of fungal growth on this tree I was looking for because an older dead tree should have some fungi on it especially in the autumn months look way up way high up into the sky and I found harissa mushrooms too far out of reach unfortunately I try to find a big enough stick try to poke them and knock them off even the biggest stick that I found still couldn't reach it it's so high up there but I'll give you a tip on how to find mushrooms if they're out of reach or how to harvest mushrooms even if they're out of reach so because this tree is missing its top half that means a lot of the bigger branches are scattered around here and perhaps the mycelium that's in this tree and producing this fruiting bodies is also found in the Fallen limbs as well so if you find a mushroom that's out of reach but you find limbs of that same tree scattered about underneath the canopy look on those limbs and see if you find any fruiting bodies sure enough if you come over here just a few feet away there are edible mushrooms growing directly on a limb same exact species as that hurry see em growing up there right back there's the tall sugar maple tree Acer saccharum the one that I just showed you the way top of this harissa mushrooms kept looking around found this limb probably came from that same exact tree containing the same mushroom which mushroom is this well this is a choice edible mushroom in the hurry cm genus this is the comb tooth or the coral tooth hurry seem chloraloy DS so it's closely related to lion's mane that one is her ECM erinaceus there's another one that grows in these woods which is bears head or bears head - that one's her ECM americano this one's her isom coronoid he's harissa and the genus meats Hedgehog corollaries means having a likeness to coral because of the resemblance of this interestingly look at all these sugar maples sprouting up all around here got a baby right here I've got another one right here and a couple scattered about so again in a couple hundred years perhaps we'll see these becoming just as big as that one over there so I'm going to use Rob's knife open it up and I'm going to harvest this small specimen kind of browning at the tip so I'll probably eat it today won't provide much food but I'm still grateful to see this here and I'm grateful for Rob for providing this knife that can harvest it with comes off really easily again not much food here if you can see how beautiful the specimen is as I said hurry SimCorp Lloyd is just one of a couple harissa mushrooms that grows around here and how you differentiate this from the others is that this one has small spines and it's highly branched there are a lot of branches and microscopically speaking the spores are very very small compared to the other species lion's mane harissa Marin a seus is unbranched has longer spines hurry Sima maricon on the Bears head or bear's head tooth has branching but it has long spines this one has the tiny spines and the branching so grateful to find this one here I'll keep looking around see if I find any more but I did look around a little earlier didn't see any more except for this one right here okay so as I was walking through the woods a little more I had my eyes glued to the forest floor looking for mushrooms and I found some that instantly told me which trees are in the area and sometimes that's the case you don't have to specifically look at trees to know which trees are in the area you can look for things that tell you or give you clues as to which trees are in the area such was the case with these beautiful little orange yellow mushrooms fruiting on a particular substrate that tells me what mushrooms these are and also which trees are in the area so these mushrooms are fruiting on Hickory shells and they're not exclusive to Hickory shells these mushrooms can also grow on black walnut shells as well so this is the walnut my cena and right now I'm finding it growing on Hickory shells bitternutt Hickory shells but it will grow on a variety of Hickory shells also black walnut shells so that's its diet its decomposing the organic material found within these shells and these mushrooms are small they're yellow orange they've got a white spore print they're not considered to be edible it's not like they're toxic they wouldn't just do much if you put them in the cooking pan they would pretty much just disappear so I don't recommend eating this mushroom but it is beautiful and it's worth seeking out because of its interesting substrate now the scientific name of the walnut Massena is my scenic Rossiya and crow sia refers to the saffron color or the orange yellow color of these fruiting bodies in older field guides you'll see another scientific name being used which is my cena lute jo Palin's but it's most currently accepted scientific name is my Cena crow SIA now that my Cena genus is rather large over 500 species worldwide in the vast majority of them decompose organic material as saprotrophic fungi and many people would tell you that the whole entire genus comprised the separate rope and fungi but is that true well there are exceptions to everything in life my scene of genus included and so there's at least one parasitic my Cena species which parasitizes coffee plants and also there are reported to be at least two mycorrhizal my cena species and their mycorrhizal with orchids now this particular my seen a species my scenic Rossiya is saprotrophic it's not parasitic it's not mycorrhizal and again you want to look on chicory shells or black walnut shells late summer through fall is a good time to find this particular species and you'll usually find a lot of it so I'm finding multiple fruiting in this particular area and it seems to be restricted just to the areas where the chicory shells are found obviously so it's very localized you'll find a lot of it then you'll find none until you find another hickory tree then you'll find none until you find another hickory tree but sometimes under hickory trees or black walnut trees you won't find any of these but this particular tree that's right behind this camera I'm finding a lot of these mushrooms now if you recall in a previous video I filmed another mushroom the kind of resembles my scenic Rossiya because of its interesting diet or it's interesting substrate and that was the struggle Erskine enjoy these mushroom the Magnolia cone mushroom that one's in a struggle eres genus though so completely different genus so the two aren't closely related but they kind of do similar things so I encourage you to get out there look for this my seen a mushroom look for other my scene of mushrooms as well there are a lot of them out there and interestingly over two dozen my cena mushrooms are bioluminescent meaning they glow in the dark either the fruiting bodies glow in the dark or the mycelium glows in the dark or both glow in the dark I don't think this one glows in the dark still a beautiful mushroom really excited that I found it today [Music] okay so we had a lot of fun today walking around these woods looking for mushrooms studying the trees studying different interactions between various species that largely go unseen I could have made this video a little longer 45 minutes an hour hour and a half but I decided to keep it pretty short and probably the number one species that I found today I'm most excited about the maitake mushroom hen of the woods choice edible mushroom one of my favorites can't wait to cook this one up while I was out here looking for mushrooms and foraging mushrooms and filming I was also picking up any trash that I found anything that could fit in this bag and I'll probably continue to do so after I turn this camera off it's something simple that we can all do you included every time you're out here to help keep the places that you love sacred if you enjoy being out here if you enjoy foraging from the lands that you love keep it sacred by also harvesting trash it seems simple yet its results are powerful and long-lasting thanks so much for watching this video as always I truly appreciate it if you enjoyed it and you're not subscribed to the learn your land YouTube channel feel free to subscribe to the learn your land YouTube channel you can also head on over to learn your landcom sign up for the email newsletter we could stay a touch that way or you could follow me on social media on Instagram and on Facebook at learn your land thanks again for watching this video as always a truly appreciated happy autumn mushroom foraging [Music] you

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 150,264

Keywords: Adam Haritan, Learn Your Land, Mushrooms, Mushroom, Fungus, Fungi, Mycology, Medicinal Mushrooms, Edible Mushrooms, Paul Stamets, Foraging, Wild Edibles, Herbalism, Hunting, Fishing, Outdoors, Nature, Permaculture, Gardening, Plants, Botany, Hiking, Primitive Skills, Trees, Forest

Id: iBOBWWqh0d8

Length: 20min 16sec (1216 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 09 2019