Pretty Poison(ous) Fall Mushrooms

Amanita for sure.

Veil hangs off the cap's edge -- like a slip showing.

Shreds of a veil.

Two weeks ago, edibles were widely available, but today's pass through the woods showed me some strange and beautiful fungi that, after I looked them up, I found belonged to the Amanita family. Avoid this deadly family. Its mushrooms can be white, yellow, orange, red, gray, brown, or greenish. Gorgeous but poisonous. How are these Amanitas although they look so different? They show family characteristics. If you see even ONE of these characteristics, stay away.

1. Amanitas grow from a bulbous base.
2. Amanitas have a thin "veil" from the stem to edges that tears and shreds as the mushroom grows. Often, there are shreds left hanging, like a slip showing. Often, there's a ring around the stem where the veil was attached.
3. Amanita caps often have pimples or scales, or they look as if they were salted with flake salt or peppered.
4. Some Amanitas have shaggy stems.

These are from the woods, but Amanitas also appear in lawns and in mulch bought from garden stores.

My Kind of Turkey

It's no secret that my Seasonal Affective Disorder prods me to "Sleep." "Be apathetic." "Don't do anything." All activities are too far, too expensive, too crowded, too tiring. The world is colorless. Furthermore, it rained all day yesterday. I went out into the woods this morning only to get some daylight for Vitamin D.

Wood ears

I saw a deer, who made that squeeze-toy wheeze, and a wild turkey, who flapped away ("Run, turkeys, run!" I said), and, although it's too late in the year for them, mushrooms, including a cache of edible oyster mushrooms and wood ears such as you get in Chinese food (pictured above). Most abundant, however, were the fungi called Turkey Tail and False Turkey Tail. They look alike, but the real Turkey Tail has pores on the underside, and the other is smooth. What you see here gilding a fallen log is False Turkey Tail. Its sunny colors on greenish lichen served their purpose until the sun itself came out. Only 30 days until the Solstice when the daylight begins to lengthen.

The Equivalent of a Twelve-Point Buck

Lost on a hundred acres plus the adjacent Missouri Conservation acreage, beating through downed trees with all my apps' arrows pointing different directions, and bruised and scratched and breathless with no water, I hit my shins on a branch and fell. There's nothing like whirling through the air thinking "!" and landing on one or another body part.

I have two kinds of falls. One is divinity forcing me to see a natural wonder. I found my first morel mushroom after a fall, and blewits (white mushrooms with ice-blue interiors), and tiny amphibians, and foxholes, and rare plants. The other, less common fall, the "stupid fall," teaches me only that I should have watched my step.

Wear your orange in autumn!

Got up all sweaty, thirsty, and breathless and beheld at the foot of a tree the 12-point buck of mushrooms: the unmistakable Hen of the Woods (Grifola frondosa), a choice edible, a big one. Took a moment to register.

After no rain for six days, "It's probably all dried out and no good," I thought, and pinched one of its featherlike fronds. It was perfectly fresh.

I released the fungus from the ground. No way I was I leaving it! Solid almost all the way through like a cauliflower, it weighed between 15 and 20 pounds. Determined, lugging it along, I escaped the snaggy part of the woods, went down and up ravines so steep they're scary just to look at, and bumbled on home, stopping to rest, gasping and with a backache and a cherry-red face and fearing a heart attack. But some things are worth it.

Although "Hens" can weigh up to 100 pounds, a 20-pounder is a great find by any standard.All evening I roasted the fronds to a lovely brown crispness, and chopped and sauteed the solid white meat and otherwise preserved as much of the find as was reasonable. No way was I not going to show and tell!

Lust for Lunch and Fall Colors

A certain aura surrounds lunch; it is like no other meal, a civilized refreshment in the meat-grinder of the workday, twice so if you can consume it outdoors. I packed a picnic lunch of ham and cheddar on a seeded bun, a dill pickle and a bottle of well water, drove to Babler State Park (2300 acres), had my lunch there and have never had a happier meal. The woods are still green, and that made me happy, but I lusted too after the orange and chocolaty tones suddenly so satisfying at this time of year. On my lustful lunch hour I bushwhacked until I found some. I'm attending courses to learn my Missouri mushrooms but am not set to eat any. I do know one must cook all edible wild mushrooms; never eat them raw. The bright orange mushroom is Cinnabar Polypore (Pycnoporus cinnabarinus); the striped one, fresh Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor). Both are pretty. Neither is edible.