 December 2022 | |||
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Zachary Mazi: Mycological Mexico - Oaxaca Diversity and Ethnomycology
pandemic in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he lived, cooked and foraged with his fiancé Kimberly. He now lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, where he is involved with local indigenous communities to explore sustainable community-supporting mycotourism. He is the owner of The Fungivore, an aspiring author, mycophagy researcher and performance poet. Follow his adventures on instagram at @the_fungivore.
foraging, gathering, studying, lecturing on, researching, and loving mushrooms and fungi. |
| A most appreciated care package! |
The holiday season is a traditional time to gather with friends, family and loved ones. Considering the ongoing pandemic, I can’t think of a safer way to gather than in the outdoors. Gathering outdoors might mean a walk around the block with a friend or making dinner over a fire in the backyard with friends and family. Or, it might mean going on a longer walk or hike in the forest in the hope of finding mushrooms. Whatever motivates you to go outside and move your body is good…being outside nourishes us in ways that are hard to name! Being with friends, outdoors or not, adds an extra layer of wellbeing.
As the year winds down, I am reminded that we are all getting older. For some, that means time for retirement and relaxation and the time and energy to pursue our individual interests and hobbies. For others, it means it’s time to pursue the next stage of our careers or family life or community while still pursuing the fungal! I am grateful to share an interest that so many others share. I am hopeful that the younger folks interested in the mycological realm will continue to step up and keep our community strong and engaged. Let the mycelium continue to connect and nourish us all!
Very Happy Holidays to you all!
Natalie
PS - Please volunteer at our annual Fungus Fair if you can!
Culinary Corner
The Hunt for Hedgehogs
By Hanna Docampo Pham
By Hanna Docampo Pham
With the holidays coming up and with more rain, the forest will sometimes offer an abundance of different kinds of mushrooms. In Salt Point Park, a mushroom mecca, people flock to search for edible mushrooms to spice up the holiday dishes. The porcini flush is over, and it’s time for hedgehog and yellowfoot to shine.
Hedgehog mushrooms are a popular mushroom related to chanterelles. You’ll recognize hedgehogs by their pale orange color and most notably, layer of little spines where you would expect to see gills or a sponge layer. These tell tale spines, referred to as teeth, are what make hedgehogs one of the few mushrooms that can be easily identified by beginners and give them their “hedgehog”-like appearance. Hedgehog mushrooms are also called the sweet tooth mushroom and the pied de mouton in France, meaning foot of a sheep.
Hedgehog mushrooms found in Mendocino
Hedgehog mushrooms are actually scientifically 2 species, Hydnum umbilicatum and Hydnum repandum. The “bellybutton” hedgehog (Hydnum umbilicatum) have a small indent at the center of their caps, while the other hedgehog mushrooms (Hydnum repandum) don’t have the indent in their caps. Bellybutton hedgehogs are usually smaller and thinner than the other type of hedgehog mushroom. Regardless of the species, hedgehogs can be found near conifers, especially pine and spruce, as well as oak. While hedgehogs are common, it’s hard to fill your basket when you find only a couple at a time scattered across the forest floor. If you’re lucky enough to find a good area, you’ll find dozens of hedgehogs growing in one patch.
2 mushrooms share a lot of the same characteristics, they both have an orange color and meaty texture, and don’t dehydrate well: hedgehogs and chanterelles! In fact, hedgehogs and chanterelles are related to each other. They even happen to both be mycorrhizal fungi that grow by conifers and oaks, so you might happen to stumble upon hedgehogs and chanterelles in the same patch. Right now, you can find hedgehogs, chanterelles, and yellowfoot in Mendocino, Salt Point Park, and Sonoma!
This huge hedgehog mushroom (Hydnum repandum)
found in Salt Point Park weighed half a pound!
This month’s recipe is a traditional French onion tart, except with onions and hedgehog mushrooms instead of the usual onion and cheese combination. It brings out the earthy, nutty, and slightly peppery, savory flavor of hedgehogs. It’s a versatile recipe and if you don’t have hedgehog mushrooms, you can use another type of mushroom (or a combination of mushrooms), especially chanterelles if you’re going for a similar flavor to hedgehogs. It’s paired with warm green beans with vinaigrette, although you can serve it with any type of green salad you’d like.
French Onion Tart With Hedgehog Mushrooms
Adapted from Beck York
- For the pastry dough:
200 grams flour
100 grams butter
10 ml water
100 grams butter
10 ml water
- For the filling:
5 large onions
2 tablespoons butter
Two large handfuls of hedgehog mushrooms
Salt & pepper
2 tablespoons butter
Two large handfuls of hedgehog mushrooms
Salt & pepper
- For serving:
Sauteed green beans with a vinaigrette sauce
To make the shortcrust pastry; in a bowl combine 200 grams of flour with 100 grams of butter until crumbled. Slowly add 10 ml of water to the dough until fully combined. Set aside the dough to a fridge to rest.
To make the filling; slice the onions. In a pan on medium heat, melt the 2 tablespoons of butter and sweat the onions. Season the onions with a generous seasoning of salt and pepper.
To make the filling; slice the onions. In a pan on medium heat, melt the 2 tablespoons of butter and sweat the onions. Season the onions with a generous seasoning of salt and pepper.
Pictured left are fresh hedgehog mushrooms,
pictured right are the onions and mushrooms being layered into the tart.
Clean and slice the hedgehog mushrooms.
Roll out the shortcrust pastry, and press the dough into a large tart tray. Flute the edges of the dough with your fingers, and prick the bottom and sides of the dough with a fork (to prevent the dough from puffing up while it bakes).
Layer the onions and mushrooms into the tart. Bake at 350°F for 35 minutes or until edges of the dough are golden brown and the mushrooms are fully cooked. Slice the tart once cooled. Serve with some warm green beans with vinaigrette. Enjoy!
We will not be having a monthly culinary dinner this month, but instead be enjoying a Holiday dinner together at the usual location of the Hall of Flowers on Sunday, December 18th.
Check the Holiday dinner entry in this newsletter for more details and please don't forget to register if you plan to attend~
Cultivation Quarters
Mushroom Identification and You—the Mushroom Cultivator
By Ken Litchfield
(Re-post from November 2017)
By Ken Litchfield
(Re-post from November 2017)
Oft times new folks getting into the world of mushrooms encounter what they soon come to feel is a very real barrier to their understanding and enjoyment of this field. Mushroom Identification can be a real barrier to the average beginner who sincerely wishes to explore this path and who often is inspired to delve further by the seeming ease of the path and the many hand holding people and tools available, especially to folks who choose membership in a society or social online group rather than traipsing out on their own independent path.
Often the beginning mushroom enthusiast soon encounters what I call the “Beekeepers Gadgetgear Syndrome.” Often budding beekeepers will think that all the mysterious information garnered by long term beekeepers will magically osmose into their beginner noggins if they just go out and buy the full beekeepers outfit and 3 Langsdorf hiveboxes and two types of top bar hives and a Warrebox and a fancy smoker and a full array of hive tools offered at their local foofoosheeshee bee store and before you know it they have thrown a few thousand dollars at their new hobby including for their first and second and third replacement colonies and they wonder why they aren’t making a professional living (while looking good at it) off of the multitudes of gallons of honey they expected to produce while “their” beeslaves sighed and said “FU we’re outta here.”
Often the new mushroomer, and especially the new mushroom cultivator, discovers that there is quite the online gadgetgear fix to be had when it comes to expenditures for books, and sterile air flow hoods, and mushroom knives, and filter patches and microscopes and all sorts of GG paraphernalia, and expert weekend seminars that beginners believe, and expert seminar touters proselytize, are so necessary to osmosing into their noggins the mysteries of the mushroom world. Not to mention, but mention anyway, all the DSLR clickbaitmakers now available for the “serious” digital mushroom taxonomist invading Mushroom Observer or making their own shroomporn site. There’s even morelcamo fashions that prevent a beginner’s mercenary rivals from finding them in their patches, or maybe you want them to see you looking snazzyfashionista.
All anyone really needs are their —
Often the beginning mushroom enthusiast soon encounters what I call the “Beekeepers Gadgetgear Syndrome.” Often budding beekeepers will think that all the mysterious information garnered by long term beekeepers will magically osmose into their beginner noggins if they just go out and buy the full beekeepers outfit and 3 Langsdorf hiveboxes and two types of top bar hives and a Warrebox and a fancy smoker and a full array of hive tools offered at their local foofoosheeshee bee store and before you know it they have thrown a few thousand dollars at their new hobby including for their first and second and third replacement colonies and they wonder why they aren’t making a professional living (while looking good at it) off of the multitudes of gallons of honey they expected to produce while “their” beeslaves sighed and said “FU we’re outta here.”
Often the new mushroomer, and especially the new mushroom cultivator, discovers that there is quite the online gadgetgear fix to be had when it comes to expenditures for books, and sterile air flow hoods, and mushroom knives, and filter patches and microscopes and all sorts of GG paraphernalia, and expert weekend seminars that beginners believe, and expert seminar touters proselytize, are so necessary to osmosing into their noggins the mysteries of the mushroom world. Not to mention, but mention anyway, all the DSLR clickbaitmakers now available for the “serious” digital mushroom taxonomist invading Mushroom Observer or making their own shroomporn site. There’s even morelcamo fashions that prevent a beginner’s mercenary rivals from finding them in their patches, or maybe you want them to see you looking snazzyfashionista.
All anyone really needs are their —
sniffersmeller
tonguetaster
fingerfeelers
eyeseers
earhearers,
and brainthinker
tonguetaster
fingerfeelers
eyeseers
earhearers,
and brainthinker
— they already carry around with them for free. Plus maybe a few freebee gadgets they have modified from a rummage sale or handmade—once they have first invested some time in learning the basics they need to know.
One easy way to get a handle on mushroom identification is the most practical—be an herbal chef gardener about it and use utilitarian categories— those that arrange the classifications according to the uses of mushrooms. The easiest handle to handle when learning mushrooms is the skillet handle. Learn what can and should go into the pan—and what shouldn’t go into the pan. That means there are certain delectable edibles like chanterelles, candy caps, porcinis, morels, shaggies, and a handful of others that are wonderful enhancements to life and living. Each also has their dangerous, bitter, or puker lookalikes to add to your learning repertoire. And of those that don’t belong in the pan there are also the most deadly in your area that you don’t want to misidentify. Around here certainly death caps and deadly Galerinas should be on the must learn list. That is really a pretty easy handle to handle for a beginner because you set your own priorities for edibles that you want to learn and the attendant rules and guidelines for each of those edibles’ need-to learn lookalikes. And Mykoweb is a great place to go to look up your mushroom of interest and follow the links to pictures and comments about the lookalikes.
As a responsible forager and wildland steward and mushroom cultivator you also have the advantage of using a different categorization system from the unwieldy scientific taxonomic classification system, which you should gradually learn but with a load of skepticism carried along. As a beginner it can be frustrating to try to learn the supposed 17 or 34 or 89 different morphological (or appearance by form) scientific categories when those categories are being changed due to new information on the evolutionary nature of how those morphological categories were scientifically arrived at originally. Plus the new scientific names are currently in a drastic state of flux with all the PCR genetic testing going on and rearranging of the supposed new phylogenetic evolutionary relationships. If you learn the new official scientific names as they are proposed and settled upon, you’ll still need to know their old names or synonyms to learn about their uses from older literature. Those old names will retain a great deal of value for a long time while the new names gradually build up a stash of lore, but which will be heavy on newer technology. The old names will retain their value as they were applied during simpler times with handier technology not dependent upon an unreliable urban grid that is still way fallible in the wildlands.
So one of the most utilitarian categorizations for mushroom cultivation is the lifestyle categorization. Instead of an unwieldy 17 or more categories you only have a basic three categories that you need to remember. Each of the categories below the three main ones can be divided usually into two or three subcategories that are also easy to learn.
The three lifestyle categories are saprobic, mycorrhizal or symbiotic, and parasitic.
One easy way to get a handle on mushroom identification is the most practical—be an herbal chef gardener about it and use utilitarian categories— those that arrange the classifications according to the uses of mushrooms. The easiest handle to handle when learning mushrooms is the skillet handle. Learn what can and should go into the pan—and what shouldn’t go into the pan. That means there are certain delectable edibles like chanterelles, candy caps, porcinis, morels, shaggies, and a handful of others that are wonderful enhancements to life and living. Each also has their dangerous, bitter, or puker lookalikes to add to your learning repertoire. And of those that don’t belong in the pan there are also the most deadly in your area that you don’t want to misidentify. Around here certainly death caps and deadly Galerinas should be on the must learn list. That is really a pretty easy handle to handle for a beginner because you set your own priorities for edibles that you want to learn and the attendant rules and guidelines for each of those edibles’ need-to learn lookalikes. And Mykoweb is a great place to go to look up your mushroom of interest and follow the links to pictures and comments about the lookalikes.
As a responsible forager and wildland steward and mushroom cultivator you also have the advantage of using a different categorization system from the unwieldy scientific taxonomic classification system, which you should gradually learn but with a load of skepticism carried along. As a beginner it can be frustrating to try to learn the supposed 17 or 34 or 89 different morphological (or appearance by form) scientific categories when those categories are being changed due to new information on the evolutionary nature of how those morphological categories were scientifically arrived at originally. Plus the new scientific names are currently in a drastic state of flux with all the PCR genetic testing going on and rearranging of the supposed new phylogenetic evolutionary relationships. If you learn the new official scientific names as they are proposed and settled upon, you’ll still need to know their old names or synonyms to learn about their uses from older literature. Those old names will retain a great deal of value for a long time while the new names gradually build up a stash of lore, but which will be heavy on newer technology. The old names will retain their value as they were applied during simpler times with handier technology not dependent upon an unreliable urban grid that is still way fallible in the wildlands.
So one of the most utilitarian categorizations for mushroom cultivation is the lifestyle categorization. Instead of an unwieldy 17 or more categories you only have a basic three categories that you need to remember. Each of the categories below the three main ones can be divided usually into two or three subcategories that are also easy to learn.
The three lifestyle categories are saprobic, mycorrhizal or symbiotic, and parasitic.
Saprobic Mushrooms
—are those that live on dead stuff. They can be subdivided into two categories—raw cellulose feeders and decayed cellulose or compost feeders, ie these mushrooms derive their nutrition from the “substrate” of mulch, straw, cardboard or other raw cellulose or from the substrate of compost or manure.
Generally, the wild lifestyle habitats of these raw cellulose feeding mushrooms are found in the dead heartwood of living healthy trees. The mushroom gains entry to the dead heartwood by an injury through the living bark and sapwood, such as a breaking branch in the wind, and proceeds to hollow out the tree, not harming the living layer of external sapwood. These mushrooms can also live on the human created habitats of chippy wood chips found in mulched gardens. As the primary cellulose feeding mushrooms break down the cellulose and turn it to compost, other compost feeding mushrooms can feed on that result. Manure is basically compost that comes from the raw green cellulose that ruminant animal teeth have ground up and the bacteria in their guts have broken down so when it is pooped out compost feeding mushrooms can devour that.
Oysters, Reishi, Turkey Tails, Lion’s Mane, Maitake are all raw cellulose feeders, and the Shaggies (Shaggy Mane and Shaggy Parasol) and Buttons (or Agaricus mushrooms) are examples of compost feeders. Garden Giant is originally a thatch and detritus feeder that has become adapted to feeding on raw chippy woodchips found commonly in human-influenced parks and gardens.
Generally, the wild lifestyle habitats of these raw cellulose feeding mushrooms are found in the dead heartwood of living healthy trees. The mushroom gains entry to the dead heartwood by an injury through the living bark and sapwood, such as a breaking branch in the wind, and proceeds to hollow out the tree, not harming the living layer of external sapwood. These mushrooms can also live on the human created habitats of chippy wood chips found in mulched gardens. As the primary cellulose feeding mushrooms break down the cellulose and turn it to compost, other compost feeding mushrooms can feed on that result. Manure is basically compost that comes from the raw green cellulose that ruminant animal teeth have ground up and the bacteria in their guts have broken down so when it is pooped out compost feeding mushrooms can devour that.
Oysters, Reishi, Turkey Tails, Lion’s Mane, Maitake are all raw cellulose feeders, and the Shaggies (Shaggy Mane and Shaggy Parasol) and Buttons (or Agaricus mushrooms) are examples of compost feeders. Garden Giant is originally a thatch and detritus feeder that has become adapted to feeding on raw chippy woodchips found commonly in human-influenced parks and gardens.
Mycorrhizal or Symbiotic Mushrooms
—are those that have a symbiotic give and take relationship with usually a tree root but other plants like shrubs and grasses might also be involved. It is necessary to grow the tree as a “substrate” in order to be able to grow the mushroom. A Christmas tree farm that also grows porcinis would be a commercial possibility. It is possible and even likely that some of these mushrooms need multiple trees or mixed forest and even multiple fungi present to fruit.
Some folks divvy up this category into ectomycorrhizal mushrooms and endomyccrrhizal mushrooms but it requires a more specialized microscopic technology to characterize these relationships, whereas it is rather easier to make the observations to categorize based upon types of trees.
Thus the fruit of the root of the pine would be Santas, Porcinis, Slippery Jacks, Pine Spikes, Matsutakes, Man on Horseback and quite a few others. The fruit of the root of the oak would be Chanterelle, Candy Caps, Amethystinas, some Butter Boletes, Death Caps, and many others. Blewits are typically found growing in the oak leaf duff under oaks but are saprobic on the dead leaf duff and easily adapt to mulched gardens. Pine Spikes are considered to be parasitic on the Slippery Jacks that are mycorrhizal with the root of the pine. So to grow pine spikes you would need to grow the pine tree and the slippery jack as “substrate.”
Some folks divvy up this category into ectomycorrhizal mushrooms and endomyccrrhizal mushrooms but it requires a more specialized microscopic technology to characterize these relationships, whereas it is rather easier to make the observations to categorize based upon types of trees.
Thus the fruit of the root of the pine would be Santas, Porcinis, Slippery Jacks, Pine Spikes, Matsutakes, Man on Horseback and quite a few others. The fruit of the root of the oak would be Chanterelle, Candy Caps, Amethystinas, some Butter Boletes, Death Caps, and many others. Blewits are typically found growing in the oak leaf duff under oaks but are saprobic on the dead leaf duff and easily adapt to mulched gardens. Pine Spikes are considered to be parasitic on the Slippery Jacks that are mycorrhizal with the root of the pine. So to grow pine spikes you would need to grow the pine tree and the slippery jack as “substrate.”
Parasitic
—is generally the easiest category of life style to learn as it has basically two well-known fungi that belong to this category: Huitlacoche or Corn Smut, and Caterpillar Fungus or Cordyceps. To grow these mushrooms you need a special living “substrate” of sweet corn for Huitlacoche and some type of insect for Cordyceps. It happens that the life cycle of these mushrooms also includes a saprobic stage that needs no living host. There is a whole booklet’s worth of cultivation information for how to grow each of these mushrooms.
Holiday Dinner
The 2022 Holiday Dinner is an organized potluck
for MSSF members and their guests.
Reservations required!
Sunday, December 18, 2022. 5:30 - 9:00 pm
Make your reservation today!
When: Sunday 18 December 5:30 to 9:00 PM
Where: San Francisco County Fair Building, (Main Auditorium, Hall of Flowers)
Theme: Organized “Mushroom Themed” Pot-Luck Dinner
Appetizers, main dishes, side dishes, salads, soups, and deserts. In addition, two mushroom
gravies, (Porcini and Morels) and killer Egg-Nog, with and without alcohol.
Cost to Attend: Adult members and guests; $10.00 each plus a pot-luck dish to share.
Youth of members and guests under 18, ($5.00 each, Children under 12, Free)
The setting for the dinner is in the large auditorium at the Hall of Flowers in San Francisco. This is a big space with high ceilings and good ventilation. There will also be festive recorded music during the dinner.
- Each adult attendee will bring a dish to share with seven other people.
- In order to have appropriate variety, when making a reservation each person will choose the category for their contribution.
- The society will provide a special holiday eggnog punch which you can spike yourself if you like, (Dark Rum Provided).
- Coffee and Tea will also be provided.
- Fantastic mushroom gravy (prep team already lined up) will be a great accompaniment for all sorts of dishes
- Volunteers will be needed to help set-up, decorate, and clean-up.
- Raffle prizes - preferably Mushroom themed - are being solicited.
- Contingent on sufficient donations of prizes, the raffle will be held at the dinner; each attendee will receive one raffle ticket.
- People donating items will receive 5 extra raffle tickets.
- Additional raffle tickets may be purchased.
- Stephanie will be available for membership renewals by check or cash.
- As training-trial prior to the Fungus Fair, we will also be experimenting with electronic wallet payment for both the dinner and membership dues.
Mycological Society of San Francisco Fungus Fair!
Check the website Fungus Fair page for the latest news.
Tickets went on sale November 13.
MSSF members will receive email updates when there are major announcements such as confirmed speakers, classes, workshops and the all important Volunteer Sign-ups.
Your efforts make the event a success!
Sunday, January 29, 2023
Diablo Valley College, Horticulture Department, Pleasant Hill
ATTENTION ALL MSSF MEMBERS!
The MSSF Fungus Fair Committee needs your involvement. The upcoming Fungus Fair scheduled for 29 January is the first MSSF fair to be held since 2019 and it will be our 50th annual fair, “A Golden Jubilee”.
The Fungus Fair Committee consists of a strong team, but we need additional
team members in order to guarantee a successful fair.
Please consider joining the Fungus fair Planning Committee managerial team and assist us in making our next fair a fabulous event.
The committee meets weekly on Thursdays at 7:00pm on ZOOM.
If you want to contribute to the society in a meaningful way, please contact me as soon as possible.
Thank You in advance for your involvement,
Curt Haney, Fungus Fair Co-Chair
EMail: lingking@sbcglobal.net
Newsletter Contact~
Mycena Newsletter Editor: Mickey Zeif
Please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or suggestions.
Email: MycenaNews@mssf.org
Please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or suggestions.
Email: MycenaNews@mssf.org