A Fungus Among Us
Mushrooms espied on our Lake Serene hike last Saturday - another sign of fall.
One of the more startling filler articles I saw this week described an underground Honey Mushroom in the Swiss Alps that sprawled over (or under) 86 acres, and was around 1,000 years old. According to the article, there’s a much bigger one in eastern Oregon that spans 2,200 acres.
None of the above mushrooms, I don’t think, is part of a Honey Mushroom. In fact, I’m not much of a mycologist, and I have no idea what the pictured mushrooms are.
When we came home from the hike, we made a pasta dish using some tasty chanterelle mushrooms that a friend had gathered and dropped off the day before. Chanterelles grow in second-growth forest and haven’t been successfully cultivated, so they’re prized by mushroom lovers, and they are very protective of their gathering places. The only time someone took us chanterelle hunting, they all but blindfolded us, taking a very circuitous route to get there, and then leaving by another route.
