Meeting Monday,
March 5^th

The next meeting will be in Room 101 at the Casa Del Prado on Monday, March 5^th.

Jim Trappe talk titled “Trees, Truffles, and Beasts.”.  Dr. Trappe is a professor of Mycology at Oregon State University.  He is a truffle expert, entertaining speaker, and researcher in the areas of hypogeous and alpine fungi, fungal-animal interactions, and mycorrhizal ecology.

 

Hunting Black Mushrooms in the Dark

At the fungus fair, one of the visitors stopped to talk to us about some mushrooms she had seen growing on a bank in Del Mar.  She said that they were growing among ice plant, and they were black and kind of gnarly-looking.  We had a number of specimens of Helvella lacunosa, and a dried morel, which we showed her, but neither seemed to fit what she had seen.  She did not think the mushrooms she saw had white stems, but could not be completely sure, since the lower parts were obscured by the ice plant.

Since we occasionally find morels growing in ice plant at this time of year, I decided to check out the report on my way home from the fair.  I admit that my scientific interest was enhanced by a vision of morels sizzling in a pan.

By the time we closed up and cleaned up, it was getting dark.  By the time I got to the location, it was very dark.  Undeterred by the lack of a flashlight, I set out to see if I could find black mushrooms in the dark.

After walking along the sidewalk below the bank a number of times, I finally spotted a darker shadow where there was nothing to cast a shadow.  I reached out to feel around, and felt something very fungal.  It turned out to be a robust specimen of Helvella lacunosa.

Encouraged by that success, I continued grasping at shadows and coming up with more Helvellas, but alas, no morels.

My appetite has now been whetted to start thinking about a morel foray in May.  Stay tuned, there will be more on this next month.

SDNHM Specimen Collection Project

A note from Dave

(To Be Repeated In Every Issue Until Some Help Arrives)

To make it easy for more of our members to stay informed about the project, and maybe get involved as well, we have added a section to our SDMS web site.  There are a number of documents posted there about the project, including a list of the things that need to be done.  See :

www.sdmyco.org/SDNHMCP.htm, or go to sdmyco.org, select the “What We Do” link, and look for the link for the SDNHM project.

Many hands make light work. Help! Many of the tasks can be done by one person, and brought to a meeting for approval by the group. Your participation will help us to get all of this done before another season goes by.

I have added some voucher slips borrowed from the FFSC web site.  The Excel version can be downloaded and is modifiable.  Feel free to experiment with it for your own use, or to share.

 

February Update

In spite of the handy voucher forms printed in the last issue, we did not get any documented collections for the museum.  Once again we threw away a number of interesting specimens for lack of documentation.

It appears that another year will go by with no specimens collected for the museum, and not much progress on even getting ready to begin a serious effort.

Eventually, this lack of progress will jeopardize our permit  to collect in the Cleveland National Forest.

Future Programs

April 2

Seth Menzer talk on Spore Prints and Art, plus members talks about mushroom adventures.  This is your chance to show off the pictures from one of your mushroom adventures.

 

May 7

Annual end of season potluck party.  Location to be determined.  Plan to bring a mushroom dish or other goodies to share.

 

SanDiegoMyco Group

I have established a new group on Yahoo.  This is a supplement to our SDMS email list.  It provides a place where we can all easily share pictures, files, and links.  It is set up as unlisted and moderated, as it is intended to be limited to our own group and close friends from other clubs.  To join the group, go to :

groups.yahoo.com/group/SanDiegoMyco and follow the instructions.  Note that you are not required to fill in any personal information to join, just your name and an email address are enough. (10 members have joined so far)

Book Review

by Mikhail Horowitz

 

The Glorious Mushroom

By Frank Spinelli

 

Gone, gone is rapture’s flooding gushes

When mushrooms they were fairy bowers,

Their marble pillars overswelling,

And danger paused to pluck the flowers

That in their swarthy rings were dwelling.

 

Those lines, by the English “peasant poet” John Clare, may be the one literary allusion to mushrooms that has somehow escaped Frank Spinelli in this glorious book of large, vivid photographs and equally enticing prose. From his forays into the “forests, rocks and open fields” that fringe his home in the Catskills, Spinelli has laden these pages with a trove of toadstools, a cornucopia of boletes, and an opulence of polypores for the reader’s delectation, along with learned tidbits on taxonomy, nomenclature, identification, edibility, and the like, with lyrical asides from Shakespeare, Shelley, Thoreau, Anonymous, and other illustrious hiking companions.

As anyone knows who has spent any time trooping through the northern woods after a midsummer rain or in the amber light of early autumn, mushrooms and the Muse are a natural match. Looking at Spinelli’s photos, shot mostly from ground level at close range, it’s easy to see the connection. How, for instance, can one fail to be transported by a colony of Fuzzy Foot Morel, the color of honey mustard, tiny trumpets making a fanfare for the eye as they surge across a hemlock stump? Or by an apparitional pair of fairy hats (Marasmius rotula), whitely manifesting on the morning after a storm? How, indeed, can anyone of sound stalk and mind withhold a sigh, confronted by the loveliness of a white, chartreuse, and lavender Russula, graced by the ministrations of a snail?

A portrait of a willowy clump of Spindle-Shaped Yellow Coral perfectly illustrates one of the paradoxical impressions evoked by fungi: how organisms that are so emblematic of the rank, littered, redolent earth they spring from can suggest something so ghostly or exobiological. “Whether I view this mushroom as an element in a moonscape or as a plant in a submerged seascape, the impression is one of otherworldliness,” Spinelli writes, italicizing the point with a passage from The First Men in the Moon, in which the “sinuous shapes” of the lunar vegetation are not unlike those of coral fungi.

For all their beauty, mushrooms can be repellent to some observers. The Netted Stinkhorn, a phalluslike fungus, has a distinctive odor (“an oddly sweet perfume with the undersmell of rancid meat”) that lures the flies whose legs distribute its spores. “Because this species so resembles the human penis, there is little doubt that, along with its putrid odor, it was a contributor to the [Victorian] era’s aversion to all things fungal,” Spinelli writes. Even so enlightened an observer as Thoreau fairly spews when considering the Stinkhorn: “Pray, what was nature thinking of when she made this? She almost puts herself on a level with those who draw in privies.”

Such repulsion, along with mycophobia, or fear of mushrooms, is a cultural response. As Spinelli notes, ’shrooms have acquired a degree of guilt-by-association - with witchcraft, devil worship, and hippie rituals - in the collective consciousness. But some of that fear, at least, is grounded in the very real specter of mushroom poisoning. Although Spinelli points out that only a handful of the many thousands of mushroom species have dire consequences when ingested, the ones that do are doozies. Gaze, o mortal reader, upon the two arresting photographs of Amanita bisporigera, the Hannibal Lecter of the fungal kingdom, and read the description of what happens to those unwary enough to sample one. Then resolve to never, ever nibble a mushroom that you have not positively identified, and quickly turn to the luscious photos of choice edibles—Boletus edulis, Cantharellus cibarius, Laetiporus cincinnatus—and the drool-inducing recipes the author has magnanimously provided. As delectable for the eye and the mind as a brace of morels braised in butter and lightly salted is for the palate, this book is a choice read.

(From the Hudson Valley Chronogram)

 

Morel Mushrooming Across America

The morel season is drawing near.  Here is a list of morel events from Morel Mania:

 

v      Mid-April - Mid-America Morel Festival Jonesboro, IL

v      Last full weekend of April - Mansfield Mushroom Festival Mansfield, IN

v      Late April - Mushroom Festival Irvine, KY

v      Late April - Louisiana, MO

v      Late April - Grafton, IL

v      Last Saturday of April - Shelbyville/Sullivan, IL

v      First Saturday of May - IL State Hunting Championship Magnolia, IL

v      Mid May - Mesick Morel Festival Mesick, MI

v      Mid-May Humungus Fungus Fest Coal City, IL

v      Early May - MO Festival Richmond, MO

v      Weekend after Mother's Day - National Morel Mushroom Festival Boyne City, MI

v      Weekend after Mother's Day - Muscoda, WI

 

More information is at:

MorelMania.com and

FungiFest.com

What’s Cooking

Fungi As Food

By T. Susan Chang.

(Some quotes from an NPR program, spring 2006)

 

The mushroom hunter's year begins with morels (Morchella esculenta), beige or charcoal and honeycombed with crevices. Their delicate texture alone is enough to make a hunter strap on his boots at the first trickle of melting snow.

Morels first appear when the snow has just melted and the sap has run. They are masters of camouflage and notoriously difficult to find, so closely do they resemble the dreary, gray leaf litter of early spring. They thrive on decaying apple trees in abandoned orchards, in forgotten lime deposits and in asphalt cracks.

The sex life of morels is mysterious, but we know that they are necrophiles. They are the ambulance chasers of the forest floor, thriving on the death of trees and the rain that speeds their decay. Mushrooms, in fact, are merely the fruit of a vast subterranean fungal body, the mycelium, which waits in morbid repose for a natural disaster to prompt its libido.

Morels are a chef's mushroom, opulent and earthy tasting, delectable in cream. Sauces cling to, but don't waterlog, its hollow, sponge-like caps.

In the morel Mecca that is the Midwest, the treasure hunt will go on all summer, right through September in some places. There the madness of the foragers knows no time and no limit.

Online at MorelMania.com, you can find maps tracking the seasonal progress of morels as they appear, south to north, across the country. There also are special morel shirts, morel hatpins, morel key rings and magnets.

 

Pasta with Morel Cream Sauce

Morels have a tendency to turn cream a bit gray with prolonged contact, so in this recipe, they are sautéed separately then mixed with the cream at the last minute.

 

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 to 4 medium shallots, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 pound morels, rinsed in cold water and drained on paper towels

1 cup heavy cream

1 pound dried fettuccine or taglierini (or 1 1/2 pounds fresh pasta)

Fresh chives, snipped

Salt and pepper to taste

 

Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil.

While the pasta is cooking, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat until it just shimmers. Add the minced shallots and a pinch of salt and sauté until just beginning to color, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the minced garlic and sauté until aromatic, about 30 seconds. Add the morels and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes.

With a slotted spoon, remove the morels to a plate and reserve, leaving the aromatics in the pan. Add the cream to the pan and slowly simmer to reduce by nearly half.

Meanwhile, cook the dried pasta in the boiling, salted water until just al dente. If using fresh pasta, wait until the cream sauce is nearly done and cook the fresh pasta for just 2 to 3 minutes.

Drain the pasta and transfer to a warm serving bowl. Add the morels to the cream and heat briefly. Toss the morel cream sauce with the pasta and scatter with chives.

Serve immediately. Serves 4

 

T. Susan Chang is a New England-based freelance writer. She writes a monthly cookbook column for the Boston Globe food section, and her articles appear in a variety of national and regional publications.

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