Strange Oysters & Other Summer Mushrooms

[Music] greetings everyone I'm Adam Harrington today I'm hanging outside in the woods on an ideal day to look for mushrooms and I say it's an ideal day because it's mid-june here in western Pennsylvania it's really humid today and it's been rainy the past couple of days so today is the perfect day to look for mushrooms and so there's one mushroom in particular that I want to show you and talk about in this video because it kind of looks like an oyster mushroom but it also kind of doesn't look like an oyster mushroom there's something off about this mushroom if you find this mushroom in the wild I want you to decide for yourself whether you should harvest it or whether you should pass it up based on the information that it provide in this video and so if you're unfamiliar with oyster mushrooms oyster mushrooms are some of the world's most popular mushrooms both in their wild state and also in their cultivated state in their wild state they typically grow on woody debris as a decomposer of wood they grown shelf-like clusters or some shade of white cream tan or brown on the underside of the caps they have two current gills that run the complete length of the cap all the way down the stalk if there is a stock and it typically deposit white to pale lilac spore prints so let's go find this mushroom that kind of looks like an oyster mushroom and again I'll let you decide for yourself whether this one is worth harvesting or passing up let's go see if we can find okay so on my way to finding this oyster like mushroom I can't help but notice all the other mushrooms that are coming up out of the forest floor and also out of the woody debris again this is such a perfect day to look for mushrooms I think I timed it perfectly because of the humidity and all the passed rain that we've received so my basket is filling quickly it's only been about 10 15 minutes and I already have about 10 different species in here mycorrhizal and saprophytic species so let me just show you a couple of these real quick before we head on over to the oyster like mushroom one of the most beautiful ones in this basket is this court Denarius mushroom this is courting arias IO DS and the court in arias genus is probably the largest of all the mushroom forming fungal general it's estimated that there are over 2,000 species in this genus alone all members are ecto mycorrhizal all members deposit rusty brown spores and an important arias comes from the Cortina that most of these mushrooms have around the gills when the mushrooms are young and they drop to leave a little Cortina or a Webby veil around the stem now what's interesting about this species is that a positive ID can be determined based on the taste of the slime so you can see that the cap is slimy here and you can even see some spores on here from the mushroom that was sitting on top of it so it could be corked in areas io t's if the slime is mild and if it's bitter it could be another look-alike specie so let me taste this it might look weird but this is perfectly safe to do and it tastes mild so this tells me that this is court Denarius IOT let's see what else we have in the basket another interesting fungus and I'm seeing right now and it's one that will continue to fruit all summer through the autumn months is the poison pigskin puffball scleroderma suit Rena now despite its common name poison pigskin puffball it's not considered to be a true puff ball rather it's an earth ball and earth balls have these thick rind like skins on the outside to cover the spores which are inside and interestingly earth balls are more closely related to Belleek mushrooms then they are the true puff balls which are pretty closely related to a Garak mushrooms a typical cap and stem mushrooms so this is poison pigskin puff ball scleroderma said China there are about 25 species worldwide in that scleroderma genus the most frequently encountered one here in eastern North America is probably this one scleroderma said China like its common name suggests this one is considered to be toxic so we don't really eat this fungus so poison pigs can puff on interesting fungus but I definitely do not recommend eating this one what else we have in this basket well how about these Russell ah mushrooms are finding a lot of russello mushrooms today particularly from this one species now it's not always easy to get a species ID in the field on russello mushrooms at least we can get down to the group with this one because this mushroom smells like almonds or cherries so this is part of the almond scent that Russell a group they typically have yellow sticky caps and white stems and Russell uh mushrooms are also colloquially referred to as brittle gills because the majority of the mushrooms in the Russell a genus are rather brittle you drop them on the ground or you throw them up against a tree you know shatter into a lot of pcs now there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of species in the Russell of genus worldwide they're all ecto mycorrhizal here in North America only about three or four hundred are currently described but the actual number of species is probably twice or three times or quadruple that amount unfortunately we don't have a lot of people working on the Russell of genus so it's not always easy to get a positive ID here in North America but we can say with confidence that this is part of the almond scented Russell a group always a good fine just because of this smell I love it okay so I'll just show you one more out of the basket just to save time so we can get on to finding that oyster like mushroom I'll just talk about this last species because it is a crowd favorite I only found a little bit of it so far I'm sure if I look around harder I'll find some more this is a crown tipped coral fungus art oh my C's pixie goddess this one is easy to identify amongst all coral fungi because there are three things to keep in mind that this one it grows on wood so you're going to find it directly on wood it's a decomposer of wood each branch ends with a crown at the tip and this crown features a depression with three to six points all the way around that depression and if you taste this fungus raw and spit it out it will taste peppery so I'm just going to taste a little bit of this and it takes a couple seconds 10 15 maybe even 20 then afterwards it's going to leave that peppery aftertaste in your mouth make sure you spit it out because you definitely don't want to swallow any wild mushroom raw and this one tastes peppery so all those three features helped me positively identify this mushroom as a crown tip to coral so I'll put this one back there are other species in here but to save time so we can get on to find our oyster like mushroom I'm gonna stop right here so let's pick up our basket and head on over to this other mushroom that I promised you that we find okay so here's this mushroom that I promised you this oyster like mushroom the kind of looks like an oyster mushroom kind of doesn't look like an oyster mushroom we're trying to get an ID on this beautiful species right here there's about four that are fruiting from this dead hardwood tree right here now whenever we think about a classic oyster mushroom remember something like pleurotus Austria des for maybe a summer oyster mushroom Florida's pulmonary as' we're thinking about smooth caps we're thinking about gills in the underside that run the complete length of the cap down the stock and if the stock is present it's usually off to the side not always the stock doesn't have a ring or a partial veil and the mushrooms grow in clusters whenever we look at this specimen right here or at least all four specimens a couple of things that are different from a common image of an oyster mushroom the pleurotus genus so which mushroom is this well let's look at some key features of this one we can see that it's not growing in dense clusters each one is growing by itself it's close by so it's probably scatter that's probably the correct term to use here rather than growing in clusters whenever we look at the cap of this mushroom we could see that it's textured it's not completely smooth it's got some hairs on it it's kind of patchy when we look underneath we see that the stock is very thick it's very prominent and it's more centrally oriented when we think about other Ulster mushrooms we think about stocks that are off to the side or stocks that are absent mushrooms that don't even have stocks this one has a very centrally oriented prominent thick stock also on this stock is a very important key feature there's a ring around the stem a ring around the stem on this mushroom right here whenever you think about oyster mushrooms we really don't think about partial veils or on Ulysses or rings around the stem but this one has it and when we look at the cap margin of this specimen we can see that there are veil remnants things hanging down from the margin of the cap which leads us to believe that you know this mushroom had a partial veil to cover the gills when this mushroom was immature then the partial veil broke to leave this raised own around the stem whose veil remnants around the cap margin so what mushroom is this is this an oyster mushroom is it a true oyster mushroom is it'll look like is it edible what can we say about this mushroom well believe it or not this is an oyster mushroom this is in the pleurotus genus this is the a old oyster pleurotus dryness so that pleurotus genus houses at least 40 different species some estimates are all the way up to 200 species within that pleurotus genus most of the mushrooms look rather similar but a few of them are oddballs and this is one of those oddball species but it is a pleurotus mushroom so it is a true oyster mushroom it's odd because it has that partial veil has these veil remnants got the thick centrally oriented stock now there is another look-alike species that looks almost identical to the naked eye and it's pleurotus lavis that's another veiled oyster but the veil on that species is ephemeral it doesn't last as long and that mushroom also has a more southern distribution or typically fruits and more warmer climate this one is pleurotus dry Innes regardless of which species it is plural is dry in us or pleurotus Lavis both of them are edible now some people don't rate this species as highly as pleurotus Austrey Attis or poor out as pulmonary s or some of the other austere mushrooms because this one is typically thicker it's more stout it's more firm more tightness so you have to employ longer cooking methods I'm going to harvest some of these and cook them up when I get home another interesting thing about this fungus is that it's a classic white rot decomposer of hardwood trees and so you want to look on hardwood trees for pleurotus dryness late spring summer through fall and you could tell that it's a white rot decomposer just by looking at this hardwood log because you could see the white pulpy cellulose that's left behind so white rot fungi including this species right here through their enzymatic processes in the mycelium inside the wood they secrete enzymes that are very good at breaking down the brown lignin and they leave behind to a rather large degree a lot of the pulpy cellulose and the hemi cellulose so that's what we're seeing right here this bleached wood that's a result of the white rot fungi within this law but pleurotus dryness isn't the only white rot fungus here I flipped this log over I can see some false turkey tail sterio Moss TRAI this is a ubiquitous fungus found all year round and the mycelium of this fungus is also secreting enzymes and degrading the lignin leaving behind a lot of the cellulose and Hemi cellulose so that's a white rot fungus this is a white rot fungus as well so what I'm going to do right now is harvest the two best specimens right here there are two more that don't look like they grew properly so I'm going to leave those two behind but I'll harvest these two and show you what they look like up close okay so one is really large and one is really small and actually the smaller one doesn't look that great but the bigger one looks perfect this is one that I will definitely cook up whenever I bring it home now you can see that it's white but it's also yellowing as this mushroom matures it tends to turn very yellowish but that will still be pleurotus drying in us as long as you go through all the other key identifying features now another key feature of this fungus is its smell now other mushrooms in the pleurotus genus might smell like fish or might smell like anise this one smells somewhat citrusy almost like grapefruit mixed with a dirty sock smell that's what I get whenever I smell this mushrooms whenever you find this mushroom harvest it and put it up to your nose and you should get that citrusy or grapefruit smell and I really get it with this it smells better than it smells worse but it still has like a dirty sock aroma to it so I've got a pretty bad specimen right here and looked good whenever I was ready to harvest it but it's very floppy kind of soggy this one looks much better so I've got this mushroom this is a white sport mushroom as well so if you want to really confirm your identification take this home take a spore print it will be white we've got protists drying as the classic veiled oyster mushroom a true moister mushroom in that pleurotus genus now I'm going to look around see if I can find some other edible either mushrooms or plants so after looking around for a bit I found a few additional ingredients to cook alongside the veiled oyster and I'll show you very briefly a simple and easy wild food dish that I created once I arrived home as you can see here I cleaned and sliced the veiled oyster in distrib equal size I also have a small amount of crown tipped coral our de Mai C's picks a dhatus to add to the pan I found a guild bull eat file a porous rota xanthus and you can tell it's this species because of the yellow mycelium located at the base of his stock and I'll remove the stock before I cook this mushroom as far as wild plants I found a nice-sized patch of wild garlic this is one of our native species allium canadensis and I'll be adding only the Ariel bulblets from the species and last but certainly not least I'll be adding some fresh tender sassafras leaves that I harvested from a few saplings and this ingredient will add a nice lemony flavour to the final dish basically I'm going to add all the ingredients to a cast-iron skillet and cook for a few minutes before adding some salt and pepper so nothing too fancy it's very simple yet the final product will be quite tasty I decided to start with ghee as my fat of choice and then I added all the mushrooms to the pan before I added the plants because the mushrooms will take the longest to cook after about five minutes of cooking I added the wild garlic bulb lit and allowed all of this to cook for another one or two minutes before adding in the seasonings which included salt pepper and the fresh sassafras leaves and that's it all these ingredients were wild - the salt and pepper and all the ingredients were harvested within 10 minutes of looking around I could definitely tell that the veiled oysters were in this dish because they were the most needy and texture rich of all the ingredients and they did taste really good so I do rate the species as one worth foraging if you find it at or a little before its peak stage of harvesting once the veiled oyster becomes fully mature it tends to get soggy buggy and quite stinky so the veiled oyster a mushroom that kind of looks like an oyster mushroom but in some respects it doesn't like an oyster mushroom but it is a true oyster mushroom pleurotus dry anise I hope you learned something about this interesting and edible fungus and I hope you also learned some new things about some of the other mushrooms in wild plants that we discussed in this video and just as a final note I encourage you whenever you out here foraging for plants and mushrooms to reciprocate the act by also harvesting any trash that you will encounter every single time I'm out in the woods every single time I'm foraging every single time I'm filming these videos I inevitably encounter trash and I realize that if I don't pick this stuff up especially in these more remote areas who else will and for all that I've been given over the years all that I've been provided this is the least that I can do and so I encourage you to reciprocate the act of foraging every single time you're out in the woods or parks or forests to also harvest any trash that you encounter and also to influence others to do the same it's a seemingly simple act but with huge rippling effects so thank you one more time for watching this video and I applaud you for learning something new about your land if you enjoyed this video feel free to subscribe to the learn to LAN YouTube channel you can also head on over to learn your land comics sign up for the email newsletter thanks again see you on the next video you

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 72,793

Keywords: Adam Haritan, Learn Your Land, Mushrooms, Mushroom, Mushroom hunting, Fungi, Fungus, Medicinal Mushrooms, Oyster Mushrooms, Mycology, Foraging, Botany, Plants, Herbalism, Primitive Skills, Permaculture, Outdoors, Nature, Hiking, Backpacking, Fishing, Hunting, Trapping, Pennsylvania, Forest

Id: PkKieJQNU5E

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 01 2019