Need a photo under the cap. Looks like it might have pores (spongy surface) rather than gills which would make it some kind of bolete. If it is a bolete, you should also cut the stem to see if it stains blue, that will help with the ID.
There are some very tasty bolete species but also some you don’t want to eat.
Yeah, without a picture of the stem and underside all anybody can do is confirm it is a mushroom.
Any idea about this mushroom I found growing on an oak log? I inoculated shiitake on this log a year ago. The mushroom looks and smells like shiitake but I never see any shiitake with that beautiful yellow color.
Well, it’s definitely not a shiitake. Besides the fact that the color is different, the cap is vase shaped rather than convex and the gills run down the stem (shiitake gills are not attached to the stem).
I tried keying it out based on the assumption that the spores are whitish. Here are some possibilities so far:
Golden oyster mushroom (not a good match)
Golden milky cap (better, but also not a very good match)
Some kind of obscure clitocybe species
If the spore print is other than white that could open up some different possibilities.
Thanks for the reply. You are absolutely right on cap and gills so it’s not a shiitake. Shiitake is such an easy mushroom to identify that I never paid attention to its details.
I assume the spore is white because I didn’t notice any unusual spore print. But I have more same kind mushrooms on the log and I will do a good thorough spore print tomorrow.
My initial impression was that it’s a milky cap but no milk, no staining was observed, also it doesn’t have the typical hairy ring on many milky caps. So it remains a mystery mushroom with prefect shape, color and smell.
That looks like one of the tasty bolete species like the king bolete or white king bolete (aka porcini). I’m jealous! The “netted” appearance of the stem is a good clue; you would also need to confirm that it doesn’t stain blue. I think the cracked appearance of the cap is not typical and maybe the result of drying out. Unfortunately, it looks a bit too old to eat; they tend to get full of worms if you don’t get to them quickly.
Blue stain is a good test for some but not all mushrooms. We have orange birch boletes that stain blue in a hurry when cut but that are perfectly fine. For table fare they are meh but they make fantastic mushroom powder with a hint of sweetness.
Correct, it’s not a hard and fast rule. But avoiding blue staining boletes is good for beginners; it eliminates a lot of the ones you shouldn’t eat (at least in North America).
Looks like it, although it’s unusually small. Definitely in that group at least with the Leccinum species.
I have eaten birch boletes a few times and they can be pretty good, but newer info shows they can cause bad reactions and are somewhat of a risk.
Thanks for the info. In general, I am very cautious about eating wild mushrooms. But I found it interesting to know what mushrooms grow on my property. I have been avoiding any boletes so far.
That’s a very wide brush to paint with, one bad apple and then all on the family are to be avoided? If that’s the standard would there be a single mushroom left to forage? Every family has a bad one.
Heck cortinarius is probably the largest mushroom family, most are between inedible and poisonous, and yet I looooove gypsies, Cortinarius caperatus. Most russulas are the same, poisonous to inedible, and yet there are choice mushrooms in that family. And of course there is the choice Caesar mushroom in the amanita family, easily identified by the fact that it has yellow stem and gills (and no polka dots of course).
Not to be contentious but one bad apple does not equal one bad mushroom. Took a bite of one bad apple, I could spit it out and throw the apple away.
Touch one bad mushroom, you could get allergic reaction. Eat one bad mushroom, sickness or death could happen. While some are willing to take a risk, many of us are not. It’s OK either way.
Telling someone new to mushrooms to avoid certain families is exactly what I would do, for the same reasons you stated. There are some families that are very easy and some that are more difficult and with higher consequences. That’s the best advice for a beginner.
It sounds like what you’re arguing against is mushroom phobia, and I agree. But I’ve also found that there isn’t much you can do about it. I have some friends that just won’t touch them, not even unmistakable species like puffballs or lobster mushrooms and with some gentle prodding by me. Yet at the same time, who knows what chemicals their storebought food has in it. It can be frustrating. Dietary preferences come from the deep primitive part of the brain.
Is there a definition for ‘primitive brains’. If so, I probably know a few folks I’d suspect of it.
But, if you are
suggesting some brain traits
have ‘evolved’, then I say “Hogwash” as
it’s only a theory like flat earth is a theory.
The point is; there is probably at least one poisonous mushroom in each and every family, so by that logic you should avoid them all.
Mushroom foraging is not for the careless. If you can’t identify a mushroom with 100% certainty you should not eat it. I do avoid a bunch of mushrooms because how hard it is to nail it down among lookalikes, not because of the family. Again, cortinarius; probably 90+ percent of that family are inedible to poisonous including deadly, but I’m 100% confident in picking gypsies because I’m confident in my ability to id it.
Just responding to your first paragraph - I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying to avoid all mushrooms. Some families are definitely safer than others. Either because the edible mushrooms are easier to tell apart from the poisonous ones, or because the poisonous ones will only make you sick to your stomach rather than seriously harm you.
Your familiarity with gypsy mushrooms is no doubt based on good experience. I think that to a beginner, telling gypsies apart from other Cortinarius would be more difficult than telling a King bolete from a Satan’s bolete (for example). This is based on personal experience having ID’d them both. Gypsies are rare in in my area; I found one once that I was pretty sure was a gypsy, but was still too uncertain to eat it.
I would say I want to be 300% sure of a mushroom ID. I had bicolor boletes popping up on my property under a poplar tree for many years but I never ate them. If I want to collect the honey mushroom in the fall, I could pick 100 lbs easily but I only ate a little last year after many years of positively ID’d it. The same goes with brick cap. So far I only ate maiitake, Berkeley polypore (very little), black trumpet, Blewit (very little even I had at least 5 lbs left on leaf pile), saffron milkcap (very little 3 years after ID’d it and found I didn’t like it). I found some golden chanterelle this year but I am not ready to put it in my mouth. Yes, I am probably over cautious and let many delicious mushrooms wasted. But that’s just me.
