It's Finally Raining!by Irina Gendelman It's the end of summer and the warm mushroom rains are finally here, drenching the dry yellow grass. Each drop falls through the canopy of needles and yellow sunbeams, like tiny arrows onto the leathery salal leaves and down through the moss, soaking and feeding the cottony mycelium. Saturated with rain, the white downy fungus sends up beautiful fruiting bodies. Colors and shapes of umbrellas, convolutions, tongues, corals and slime are all filled with spores that will be dropped, puffed and spread in a reproductive frenzy. The mushrooms are here. If you love the thrill of the hunt, if you love the solid calm of the forest, if you are a scavenger, then you will love mushroom picking. Fungus in a nutshell The part of the mushroom you see above ground is just the fruiting body of the network of cottony mycelium hidden under the ground. The purpose of the fruiting body is to release millions of spores into the air. Each spore possesses half of the genetic material. Upon germination of a spore, a threadlike cell, called a hypha, extends and reproduces mytotically. Two hyphae, if lucky to be compatible, will come together, fuse and combine genetic material. The result is the web of mycelium that spreads and grows in the hospitable environment of the forest floor. Eventually that mycelium will send the fruiting bodies above ground to release spores and repeat the cycle...or be snatched up and fried in a pan, with butter and garlic. The fabulous foxy chanterelle One of the most beautiful and common mushrooms around the Puget Sound area is the foxy fragrant chanterelle. If you haven't smelled the sweet smell of a basketful of these golden lovelies, you've been missing out. Chanterelles look unique, making it a safe novice find once you get the hang of it. There are no mushrooms that look quite like them. New hunters do get them confused with the poisonous jack-o'-lantern and the false chanterelle just because of the orange color, but if you study the mushrooms you will see how distinctly different they look. Chanterelles are strictly woodland and saprophytic or mycorrhizal, which means they feed (help decompose) dead or decaying matter and live in a symbiotic relationship with tree roots exchanging nutrients. The most common Chanterelles have orange to cream-colored caps that are usually funnel shaped or wavy at maturity. The underside is the spore bearing surface and is usually smooth, shallowly wrinkled, or has primitive gills. Compared to the thin, bladelike gills of "gilled mushrooms," chanterelles have thick, blunt, shallow gills, often connected by cross veins. The stalk is rubbery, spores are white to yellowish, and there is no veil. In the Puget Sound area the most common chanterelles are Cantharellus subalbidus (white chanterelle) and Cantharellus cibarius (orange chanterelle). They are usually found under second-growth conifers in late summer, fall and winter. They seem to like meadows with moss, dead trees and the shade of salal. And where there's one, there's got to be another. The rules of picking The forest is not created with our safety in mind. So, we have to rely on our brains to survive.
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