The Trick To Finding Edible Enoki Mushrooms

[Music] greetings everyone i'm adam harrington i'm spending some time in the woods today and i wanted to film a very brief video for you and share with you some of the top tips that i have on finding a wild edible mushroom during the winter months now when it comes to mushroom hunting obviously it's very important that we are able to successfully identify a wild edible mushroom and not confuse it for anything else but it's also important to be able to successfully find that wild edible mushroom and to know where it grows and i want to focus on that latter point in this video and help you successfully locate this wild edible mushroom and shorten the duration of time it takes in order for you to find it so the wild edible mushroom that we will be talking about today is this delicious mushroom known as enoki or flammy line of eluda peas it has a couple other common names including inokataki the winter mushroom velvet foot velvet shank and there are some other common names used to describe this mushroom so this is an edible mushroom that grows during the winter months on wood it's a brownish mushroom it's got white gills it has a white spore print and if you want to find this mushroom i have a few tips in order for you to do that and so over the years i've been hunting this mushroom successfully during the winter months and i've noticed some patterns regarding this mushroom's growth and i'm going to share those patterns with you today and so if you're interested in finding the enoki mushroom during your winter walks to the woods stay tuned [Music] okay so here i am next to a tree full of enoki mushrooms that are just starting to fruit so you can see the cluster of mushrooms right here there's another cluster right here there's a couple clusters fruiting from the bark of this tree all the way up and down the trunk and so whenever it comes to finding enoki mushrooms the best pieces of advice i have for you for finding and locating the mushrooms not necessarily identifying but finding the mushrooms involve trees and it involves knowing what trees to look for it involves knowing where those trees grow and it involves knowing how to positively identify those trees so this is a good tree right here i would say nine times out of ten when i find enoki mushrooms they're growing directly on this tree so which tree is this well we can see that this tree has a bunch of ridges it's kind of rough barked near the base of the tree it's kind of buttressed and we can see that there are holes in the bark so this tree doesn't look like it's alive in fact it's not alive and also this tree is growing near a stream valley so there's a stream down below we're a little above that stream so all these features help us positively identify this tree so this tree is an american elm tree almost americana now i came to this area two days ago knowing that i would find enoki mushrooms not hoping that i would find enoki mushrooms not wondering if i would find enoki mushrooms not praying that i would find enoki mushrooms but knowing for sure that i would find enoki mushrooms because i knew that this was the perfect time of year to find enoki mushrooms we're in the winter season here in the northeastern portion of the united states but also because this area is full of elm trees and it took me maybe 15-20 minutes to find trees with enoki and i would say out of 40 trees that i saw about three of them had enoki mushrooms so obviously you're not going to find enoki mushrooms on every single dying or dead elm tree that you see but give it 40 trees and you might see three or four of those trees with enoki mushrooms now clearly this information is all region specific so i live in western pennsylvania if you live in western pennsylvania i would say for sure look for dying and dead elm trees for enoch mushrooms if you live outside of this area in the great lakes region more in the northeastern portion of the united states or even down south into the mountainous regions of eastern north america i would still say look for elm trees other trees where you will find enoki mushrooms growing on include poplar trees and also willow trees and some other trees as well but here in western pennsylvania and in nearby regions i would say look at american elm trees almost americana so we covered the what what trees to look for when finding enoki mushrooms and i've been talking a lot about american home but you can find it on other elms as well including slippery elm so next we should talk about the where well where do you find american elms well american elms typically grow in valleys and in flood plains with rich alluvial soils companion trees that grow in association with american elms include silver maple american ash red maple willows and eastern cottonwood and all of those trees can host enoki mushrooms but it just seems that in my experiences at least i'm usually finding enoki mushrooms on american elm trees and so usually when you're looking for enoki mushrooms you just want to get into the areas where there are valleys where there are streams areas that are prone to seasonal flooding and just scout out those areas and just look at tree after tree after tree but again narrow your focus on the elm trees if you really want to increase the chances that you're going to find them and of course once we can successfully get into the areas where american elm trees grow we should be able to positively identify the american elms with ease even in the winter months because that's when the enoki mushrooms tend to grow during the colder months of the year so there are four features that i want to go over that will help you positively identify american elms during the winter months the first one is to look for the buttressed bases of american elms when you look at the bottom of the trunk of american elms in many of them you will see that the trunks are wider at the bases of the trees sometimes very dramatically so look for those wider bases at the bottom of the american elm trees when we look at the winter bark of american elm trees we kind of went over it a little before it's typically brownish-grayish overall with scaly ridges that are separated by fissures and so the bark overall is pretty rough looking the twigs of american elm trees are smooth they're thin they've got reddish brown buds and these buds are often bent to the side and when we look at the canopy of the american elm tree even in the winter months we will see that these canopies are typically vase shaped and that's because the branches form lower down on the trunks of american elms compared to many other trees so all those features the buttress base the winter bark the winter twigs and the vase shaped crowns will help us positively identify american elms during the winter months which will then of course help us locate successfully the enoki mushrooms okay so here i am next to another dead american elm tree this is what's left of it this is the rest of it right here and of course on this tree there are a bunch of little brown mushrooms that are enoki flamingo line of velodopies you see a bunch right here there's some here there's some underneath here and even way across the stream there are some more enoki mushrooms and i've got a beautiful specimen right here so we covered the basics of trees so far we talked about what trees to look for we talked about where those trees grow and we talked about how to positively identify those trees now no video on enoki mushrooms would be complete if we didn't talk about how to positively identify the mushroom i'm going to cut this part short because i have an entire video on enoki mushroom identification you just search on youtube you just type in enoki learn your land you will see a very very detailed video on inoki mushroom identification i just want to go over eight key features of hinoki mushrooms just in case you happen to not watch that video and you just want to get the short version of it but i strongly encourage you to watch it because this is not a beginner's mushroom this is one i don't really recommend if you're just starting out foraging for wild mushrooms because it can closely resemble some other mushrooms including a deadly poisonous mushroom known as the deadly galarina but let's go over eight key features of the enoki mushroom and then after that go watch that other video on youtube just type in enoki learn your land and you'll find it so eight key features include its colder season growth habit its growth on wood its growth in clusters its sticky brownish cap its velvety stem which in some cases is more prominent near the bottom of the stem its lack of a ring or partial veil on the stem its white gills and its white spore print and again that was just a brief discussion on the key features of enoki mushrooms i strongly encourage you to read through other resources read field guides and watch the other enoki video that i have on youtube so that you can positively identify it and not confuse it for another mushroom including the deadly gallerina which again is a deadly poisonous mushroom so when i bring these mushrooms home obviously i'll cook them up because this is a good edible mushroom i discard the stems i find that they're too fibrous and i typically like to dry saute these first and then add in some fat and i don't cook it for too long because these cook rather quickly and because it has a mild taste i don't like to add too many seasonings so that i can still taste the essence of the enoki mushroom now there are some other edible mushrooms out here today i did see a nice flush of oyster mushrooms pleurotus ostriatis and i also found some amber jelly roll mushrooms in the excitia genus but i'll probably leave those ones behind now this is also the perfect habitat to find other edible mushrooms including dryad saddle mushrooms and i found some dehydrated dryad saddle mushrooms on some elm trees but you also find morel mushrooms growing in association with elm trees now you won't find any morel mushrooms this time of the year because i'm filming this in january and the earliest that i've ever seen morel mushrooms i think would be late march and so i'll come back and explore this area in a couple of months hoping to find some morel mushrooms so that's why i strongly encourage you to learn how to identify trees specifically elm trees and know where they grow so you can find not only the beautiful trees themselves but you can find mushrooms growing in association with those trees now as i mentioned before and i'm going to mention this again right now this video is very regional specific so you might be watching this video saying i find flaming line of eluded peas on so many other trees but never elm trees and i believe you but it's just been my experience that you know nine times out of ten i'm finding this mushroom growing in association with elms but again you'll find flaming line of velodopes growing in association with poplar trees specifically eastern cottonwood trees and also willow trees i found them on american ash trees and other trees as well but if i really want to find flamy line of velutipes and not waste too much time i'm just going to go straight into an elm rich habitat at the perfect time of the year which would be the winter months and usually i'm coming out with plenty of enoki mushrooms for dinner so thanks for watching this video i truly appreciate i hope you learned something about this mushroom and i hope you learned something about elm trees and i hope this video shortens the duration of time it takes in order for you to successfully find enoki mushrooms if you want to support this channel feel free to subscribe to the learn your land youtube channel and if you want to head on over to learnyourland.com you can sign up for the email newsletter so that we can stay in touch and if you are on social media feel free to give learn your land a follow on instagram and facebook thanks again for watching this video and i'll see you on the next one [Music] you

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 38,235

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Id: E98bhPmwn88

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021