On The Hunt For Wild Edible Spring Mushrooms

[Music] every one I'm out of parrots and today I'm hanging out in the woods in this beautiful spring day and I thought I'd take you along and show you some of the mushrooms that I'm finding so we're approaching mid-may as you could tell a lot of the greenery in the understory has filled in a lot of the deciduous canopy has filled in but not all of it you know some of our nut bearing trees are the last trees to put out their leaves including the walnut trees and the hickory trees but as far as your elm trees and your ash trees and your sycamore trees and maple trees they already put out their leaves a couple of weeks ago so they're already shading out a lot of the understory where they can be found now another tree that already put out its leaves is the tulip tree Lirio dendron tulip if ur and I'm actually going to grow full of tulip trees and I found this spot about a year and a half ago while filming a turkey tail video in October in the autumn months and I found this spot and I knew that I should come back here in the spring months just because certain morel mushroom species can be found in areas with a lot of tulip trees so I came here trying to see if I can find some morel mushrooms I don't find any that's okay because there's probably some other mushroom species to be found so I thought I'd take you along so if you're interested in seeing what I find come along with me we'll see what kind of fungal species we could find in these [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so I found some mushrooms and it didn't take me too long to find them that I was looking around these different tulip trees and I found this really neat one because it's gem I haul it out but it is a living tree there's an intact canopy at the top of this right at the bottom in this hall a tile cavity you could see some fungi so which mushrooms are those well these are ink cap mushrooms they're copra noid fungi and more specifically they are might get cap mushrooms and they belong to the copra Nell's my caseous group this could be copra Nell's my caseous but some purists will say unless I use a microscope you can't tell which species you have well it doesn't really matter when you're out here in this field because these are all edible as long as they're part of the copra now's my caseous group now some people might not say their choice edible mushrooms that's okay it's still an important decomposer of organic debris and it's always fun to find them they tend to grow all year round actually you can even find them in the winter months during mild or warmer spells but they tend to proliferate throughout the spring month and you usually find them in cluster it's much bigger than this sometimes you'll find clusters of 30 even 40 mushrooms all growing together I'll seemingly connected any other base but they're growing right around each other you're only about five right here and I wonder if I come back within a couple days of Elsie more I only see five right here but they're beautiful specimens and these are perfect stage for harvesting them because they don't show any signs of deliquescent so what the heck is deliquescent well deliquescent is the process of Auto digestion that you see in some copra noid fungi so they call some of these mushrooms ink cap mushrooms because they tend to liquefy their gills and their caps turned into this black inky goo now not all copra noid fungi do that but the ones that do are colloquially referred to as ink cap mushrooms so this is an ink cap mushroom if I wait one day if I wait two days I might miss the opportunity to harvest these and I think I'll just harvest one so I could show you what it looks like I'll harvest the biggest one and the biggest one actually pulled up another one so they're two right here and you could tell this is the perfect stage for harvesting because the gills are still white there's no signs of deliquescent whatsoever so I wouldn't be surprised if this started fruiting maybe a day ago if not a day and a half maybe two days ago but the life cycle is so short in copra Nell's mykc is it only lasts a couple of days you really to grab it before it starts to della quest and these cook really really quickly so if you put them in a pan you don't want to cook them for 10-15 minutes because they'll basically turn into nothing just a black mess at three four five six maybe seven minutes tops and that's how you want to cook this species so you can see it has the bell shaped cap it has these mica like granules on it when you look at the underside these fertile surfaces you see gills these girls are very closely spaced together and they're white and you also see that it has a white stem you can see that it's fused at the base all these signs point towards kaprun else my caseous so I'm glad that I found these because I always love planting mushrooms in the spring months especially when you don't think you're gonna find too many species it doesn't grow in association with tulip trees that grows in association with a wide variety of tree so copra Nell's my caseous the mica cap let's go see what else we can find so not too far away from the tulip tree I found a black cherry tree that's clearly dead it doesn't go up too far maybe 10 15 feet and then it's just knocked off completely this is a dead black cherry tree and I'm finding mushrooms that are associated with its death it's helping to return these nutrients back into the soil and pass it down the ecological line these mushrooms are deer mushrooms pluteus Irvine is now this is edible but it's not considered choice by anyone that I know and it's not considered to be a beginner's mushroom either but I enjoy finding this mushroom early in the year because I haven't seen it for a couple months but by the time you see it once or twice or three or four times and you kind of get sick of seeing it or the summer months and the fall months as well because by that time you're looking for your chanterelles and your black Trump basic chicken of the woods and a lot of your bolete mushrooms but hey in early May when there's not much else out there I mean this is a very welcoming sight to deer mushroom and this is the perfect stage to harvest this mushroom because as this mushroom matures it gets really soggy gets really buggy like most other edible mushrooms that are out there but this one is the perfect stage right here it's just opening up right now so we did get some rains a couple days ago that's probably when this mica caps opened up that's when these ones are opening up as well now there are a couple key identifying features to help you positively identify a deer mushroom if you're unfamiliar with it now whenever you look at the cap the cap of this mushroom is brownish or tannish it can appear to be wrinkled it's relatively smooth see any hairs on it the key features really are in the underside because when you look at the underside you see gills that are closely spaced now they're white at first they're white at first because the spores haven't matured once the spores mature these gills will turn pinkish pinkish tan that's because the spore print produced by the deer mushroom is pinkish tan so in older specimens you're going to see that now another key feature of this mushroom is that the gills do not touch the stem so these gills are known as non-attached because they don't touch the stem if you look really closely you'll see that there's almost like a little racetrack right where the gills meet the stem that's a key feature it means these gills are non-attached so you get the pink spore print you have to wipe to pinkish gills and you have the non-attached gills that leads me to believe that this is a deer mushroom and it is a deer mushroom because when you smell it it should smell radish and it kind of imparts a radish seed flavor into your meals if you do cook it now there is an older specimen right over here so I'm going to pluck an older specimen and believe it or not this is a deer mushroom as well even though it doesn't really look like it but if you would let this younger one go for a little bit it will eventually turn into something that looks rather similar to this more mature deer mushroom so the more mature one could tell that the spores are matured because the gills are pinkish tan and look how the gills do not touch the stem it's very very apparent in this specimen there's a huge racetrack right where the gills meet the step so I would definitely not eat this more mature specimen it looks way past its prime but these younger ones all around here that are just opening up I mean they look really delicious they don't taste that great in my opinion but they are edible and if you seasoned them properly maybe if you would cover up that radish paste or if you want to accent that radish taste well it's totally up to you but remember this is not a beginner's mushroom and you want to make sure you compare and contrast this to members of the end to loma' genus and antelope is a genus of pink spord mushrooms that can resemble pluteus mushrooms but with n2 loma' mushrooms the gills touch the stem so they fully touched the stem whereas with the pluteus mushrooms with the deer mushroom you see that the gills do not touch the stem so deer mushroom pluteus sur- again this is probably part of a larger group some purists might say you can't tell me that this is Claudia Cervantes without using a microscope okay in the field we can call it pluteus sir - you feel like bringing it home and cut me and up and be my guest but make sure you're absolutely positive of its identification before you do something like that okay so by now you're probably wondering when is he going to show us some morel mushrooms well I haven't showed you any yet because I haven't found any morel mushrooms so far and that's okay because that's how mushroom hunting goes you know you go up for one thing and then you tend to find a lot of other things as well and that's perfectly fine because what fun would a mushroom hunt be you found everything that you're looking for every single time you went out into the woods you know it's like a treasure hunt when you're foraging for mushrooms especially morel mushrooms so I'm in the right habitat as I'm a I mean these are all Lirio dendron tulip if ur a tulip trees some people also call them tulip poplar tree some people call them yellow poplar trees but they're not a true poplar species you know poplar species typically refer to members in the populists genus which is part of the willow family or the Sally a CA family but this tree the tulip tree is part of the Magnolia family you can tell there's some resemblance with the flowers because these flowers are very large and beautiful they almost look like tulip flowers but unfortunately because these trees are so tall it's hard to see the flowers in the spring months but every now and then you get lucky and you see a lower tree closer to the ground you can observe those flowers now another thing that I'm looking for to find tulip trees you're looking at the forest floor or the woodsy floor and you'll often find these very long and narrow fruit remnants so these trees put up fruits notice some arrows these are winged fruits and you'll see the remnants all year long so these aren't these years remnants this is from last year or even a previous year they just happen to be composed yet but if you're seeing a lot of these little long narrow fruit remnants that means that there are tulip trees nearby so I'm in the right habitat I just got to slow down my search but hopefully we can find somewhere a lush rooms at least one cuz I really want to show you one pearl mushroom in this video and not get skunked in this particular habitat so let's go see if we can find at least one morel mushroom [Music] okay so I've been looking around for maybe 20 or 30 minutes and there's one more thing I want to show you about tulip trees that's from where there's fruit remnants come from you'll typically see these conical like structures at the top of tool trees all winter long this is produced after the tree fruits so you're going to see these and they'll eventually fall to the ground so if you see these that's from where this fruit remnants come from so you can see these long narrow strips right here but they're in a cluster right here so you're typically gonna see them wherever you find tulip trees so look for these and look around and look up and there are tulip trees in the area so I mean the right habitat did I find any Maurel mushrooms yes right here cuz we're all mushroom right here can you see it all the way down here and that's why morel mushrooms are elusive because they blend in so easily with a surrounding habitat so it did take me a long time to find these and that's because you know I was doing some other things as well looking for some other mushrooms but if you're persistent and if you're dedicated you will eventually find morel mushrooms but you just got to keep checking and checking and checking but even if you're in the right area at the right time it's no guarantee that you will find the but if you keep checking if you extend your search and especially if you find one keep looking around because you'll probably find more so this one is more chela diminutive a-- maybe you've heard of more chela diminutive a-- maybe you haven't this is part of the esculenta clade or the blond morel clay to the yellow morel clade and this one actually shares some morphological features with black morels now it doesn't turn blackish like you would find in a black Morel but these caps are typically more conical or sub conical in shape compared to some of the other yellow morel mushrooms and also the pits and ridges are typically more vertically oriented in more chelo Damini Teva compared to some of the other yellow morel mushrooms this one I typically find later in the season so late April through May at least here in western Pennsylvania and that's typically when our morel season is winding down but you can't find it during the whole yellow Morel season but these are typically the last ones to hang on at least in the habitats that I tend to explore so to call it more chela diminutive ax why why do you think they caught more challenge the mini Teva because it's typically smaller than some other morel mushroom species but somebody's can grow up to six inches or taller but it typically doesn't get as tall as some of the other yellow morel mushrooms like more chela americana which can grow up to ten inches tall or even greater than that so there's one right here I'm just going to cut this one off looks like and this one is rather small but you can see that the cab is completely attached to the stock is their characteristic for morels very characteristic especially for yellow morels on half three Morrell's will have caps that are halfway attached to the stock black morels will typically have a little sinus or groove right where the cap needs a stock but members of the SQ lent to clay typically have caps that are fully attached and I can see it's completely hollow inside so are there any more morels around here what do you think you think there are any more morels around here well let me pull up the camera and let me show you what else I think I have found so this is the general area lots of tulip trees but there are some other trees as well with some witch hazel and then we got some of the shrubs like Japanese barbary there's a lot of that in these woods the herbaceous layer contains some garlic mustard some white snake er this is white snake er a toxic plant so right over there the leaf litters kind of kicked up that's where we found the original morel mushroom so let's look around because if there's one there's probably more and sure enough there's one right there so this is more chela diminutive the same species I'm not too surprised it's probably all we'll find today because this is an area heavy with tulip trees and this one grows in association with tulip trees now just doesn't grow with tulip trees you also find more child diminutive ax growing in association with white ash trees and hickory trees east of the Rocky Mountains and what's interesting is that the exact role in association with these trees is unknown some people report saprophytic roles some people report mycorrhizal roles or both roles during the lifecycle of the morel mushroom but this is a rather cryptic mushroom right here as far as the role is concerned this is the perfect stage to harvest it I mean it's kind of small but this is the average sized specimen of more cello dominion Teva but because it's getting some sunlight because rain isn't really in the forecast the next few days today would be a good day to harvest that one now all right underneath it right here's another morel mushroom it kind of looks like something stepped on it maybe that something was me this one looks a little beat-up so I would leave this one behind but that's good news right there if we find two right here and one over there there might be some more so let's look a little more closely and Wow right in the sunlight right there making some vitamin D - apparently so that's more child - minute Eva again you can see the long slender stalk much longer in proportion compared to the cap you can see how the cap has these vertically oriented pits and ridges and they're rather wide as well and within these pits that's where the a sigh Ras CI that's from where the spores are dispersed and this is a sterile stock right here so no spores are dispersed out of here it's all within these pits on the head of the morel mushroom so we've got one right here we've got two back there but that one I probably wouldn't harvest are there any more around here I wouldn't be surprised but I don't know if it's going to take me a long time I don't want to waste your time as I look for morel mushrooms so now we're about 10 feet away from the original spot but we could probably still find some more including this one right here so how about that one right there this one almost looks like a half free Moreau if you're familiar with more cello Punk'd piece the half frame around eastern North America has a long slender stalk like this which is studded with these little dots kind of like you see right here but the half-free morels cap is only attached halfway this is more child dominion Teva even with the long slender stalk the cap is fully attached to the stock right here this one's a little dried out right here that's why I think today would be a good day to harvest most of these just because the Sun is beating down on all of them and we don't have much rain in the forecast so this one is still good for harvesting even though it's kind of dried out right there are there any more around here so that's pretty good we found a couple so far I'm excited lots of Japanese barbary right here wait I think I see another one how about that one well that one's very difficult to see this one's kind of dried out near the top and you can see that there aren't many pits and ridges on this one that one's really interesting but this is another more chela Damini Teva but it kind of looks like the half frame rail just because of its long slender stalks we found a lot actually so far and I'm actually really excited I don't know if I'll find much more but I will continue to look but you just take a look around I'm not too surprised because we've got tulip trees Lyra dendron tulip if era and we're looking in May in western Pennsylvania this is the time to get out and look for more child I mean you Teva or other morel mushrooms that grow in association with tulip trees okay so I would call that a successful day mushroom hunting because we found three different species in a short amount of time I'm sure if we kept looking we would find more now out of all the morel mushrooms we found six total I only harvested four of them one two three four really grateful for these I don't mind leaving some behind because I know that other foragers would appreciate it other animals insects and the land would probably appreciate it too because I don't think it just puts things out here for human beings especially morel mushrooms sure it's happy that we forward from around mushrooms but leaving some behind I think that's a good token of gratitude leave some behind no matter what you find and so we got morel mushrooms mica caps beer mushrooms I'm going to cook these up and enjoy them for a nice spring meal I did find somewhere almonds last week the week before that found quite a few actually and it's been a really good year 2019 here in Eastern North America so if your season is in full swing keep looking you'll probably find some more if your season haven't started yet well get ready because it should be pretty good if your season has passed this prime well get ready for the mid to late spring fungi because there's a lot of them out there so get out and see what you can find I'm wishing you the best of luck for a successful spring mushroom hunting season [Music] you

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 123,231

Keywords: Adam Haritan, Learn Your Land, Foraging Wild Mushrooms, Mushrooms, Mushroom, Fungus, Fungi, Mycology, Hunting, Fishing, Trapping, Permaculture, Gardening, Nature, Outdoors, Camping, Hiking, Botany, Plants, Foraging, Wild Edibles, Medicinal Mushrooms, Paul Stamets, Pennsylvania, Morels, Morel Mushrooms, Ink Cap Mushrooms, Deer Mushroom, Wildcrafting, Herbalism

Id: -wWh9x5UciA

Length: 19min 5sec (1145 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2019