MUSHROOMS ARE COMING!

"Yup," says Mr. Vintage Morels, spokesmushroom for this blog. “Already here! These guys are my cousins. Look at ‘em, eat ‘em. Some are prettier than morels, like me, but none are tastier —I know!”

GREAT TO EAT

At the Diablo Valley farmers market, here in Walnut Creek, California, cultivated mushrooms have been for sale for weeks now. They can be purchased by the pound.

Black pearl, king oyster, blue oyster, and shitake to order by the pound at Diablo Valley farmers market.

At the Walnut Creek farmers market nearby, cultivated mushrooms have also been for sale for weeks now by the pound.

Beech $10.50/lb.

Maitake $15,50/lb.

Woods Ear $10.50/lb.

King trumpet $10.50/lb.

Shitake $12.50/lb.

Oyster $8.50/lb.

GREAT TO LOOK AT

On Sunday, January 20, the San Francisco Chronicle declared this has been a banner year for wild mushrooms. Check out the pic of this guy just below . . . .

This particular beauty —the Amanita muscaria or “fly agaric”— appears in the Super Mario Bros. video game as the magic mushroom, which allows players to take Super form, smashing through bricks and taking a beating. This species also appears in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in which the caterpillar tells the heroine that taking a bite from one side of the mushroom will shrink her and the other will make her taller. Another wild story this mushroom is associated with shamans, with Santa Claus, and with flying reindeer. According to the story, the mushroom’s toxicity can lead to deleterious side effects including nausea, dizziness, and delirium.

These gigantic toxic beauties appeared in the East Bay, near San Francisco, recently, says the newspaper. They were about calf-high, had their ruby-colored caps that were dotted with yellowish warts and the size of a salad plate. It has already been a banner year for mushroom enthusiasts around warmer, wetter parts of the U.S. such as Northern California, declared the Chronicle.

The danger and elusiveness are a part of the mystique of mushrooms. For example, “fairy rings” are a circle of mushrooms. In folklore, fairy rings have been considered dangerous places to enter. Witches danced and demons spoiled milk there. Whoa! Serious stuff! Other legend holds the circle of mushrooms has also been a harbinger of fertility and good fortun.

The appearance mushrooms roughly follows a season, depending on the amount of rain and nighttime low temperatures. October begets porcini. November, death caps. December-January, black trumpets, hedgehogs and winter chanterelles.

This January, the San Francisco area has had sprinkles, but no significant rain. As for the colder climes across the U.S., the mushrooms may be coming, too.

GREAT MORELS

Usually the earliest morel is commonly known as the “blushing morel” or the “wood chip morel” due to its proclivity to spring up in mulched areas and its pale color.

Another morel found in urban mulched landscaping has overall a much darker complexion. It can also be found in local disturbed areas such as trails where roots are present, and in recently burned areas where it feasts on available wood.

With a wet winter and a damp spring, this year is turning out to be a relatively good year in California for finding one of the most sought after edible mushrooms in the world: The Morel. There are many places to find morels in the Bay Area and understanding these organisms is key to having a chance at finding them.

There are some 100 species of morels worldwide and 10+ in California, according to iNaturalist. Morels are most common in moist warm weather. The mushroom is just the fruiting body of the fungus. The rest of the year the fungus just hides out.

Usually the earliest morel is commonly known as the “blushing morel” or the “wood chip morel” due to its proclivity to spring up in mulched areas and its pale color with sometimes pinkish tones. They can occur as early as this month after a few warm days and can be easily found into late May.

Another morel found in urban mulched landscaping has overall a much darker complexion. It can also be found in local areas such as trails where roots are exposed and in recently burned areas where morels feast on available wood.

The morels that grab the headlines in California are the morels found right after a fire has ravaged an area. But they can also be found in lush green wooded areas. Such is the case in the midwest and the southeast, where I’ve hunted morels, first while crawling on my hands and knees through the underbrush around the inner city lakes in Minneapolis. To this very day, those “vintage” morels from the 1970s, as I think of them, are in my kitchen, not to be eaten but to represent an adventurous idea . . . an idea of searching out delicious food, sometimes hunting it if you have to.

For further reference . . . .

King of Mushrooms

Telluride Mushroom Festival

Forage San Francisco

Cornell University Mushroom Blog

Mushroom Observer

Hugh Smith Mushroom Photographer