Some questions from a Mushroom 'newbie'

[Tic]

Good Afternoon,

I was taught by an elderly gentleman about picking Elm Oyster mushrooms (which are easy to identify as they only grow on Manitoba Maples) and apparantly they only come out in later summer.

I live in Southern Ontario, Canada - and am curious:

- Do the Elm Oysters only come up in late summer?

- What mushrooms (if any) appear in this time of year or in the coming weeks/months to come that I can look out for in this are?

Many thanks for any assistance.

[John Smalldridge]

I think the one spring mushroom everyone will be on the lookout for in the next few months are morels. These are easy to identify, and are one of the best of all wild mushrooms. There are morel progression maps on the internet that show where morels are currently being found. The current map shows morels already being found in Georgia / South Carolina and the west coast of the U.S.

[Dave W]

Also, true Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus species) often first appear in mid-spring. When I'm out looking for morels, I sometimes find Oysters.

Flammulina velutipes (Velvet Foot) also occurs in spring, often on dead elm wood. Edible, but not the best choice for a beginner, as the Deadly Galerina (Galerina marginata) is somewhat similar and occurs in spring. This is a good example of how spore print color may be helpful. Flammulina has white print, Galerina rusty brown.

Auricularia americana (American Tree Ear) sometimes appears in spring. This edible mushroom is best dried and then rehydrated for use in stir-fries. Exidia species --another spring fungus-- can look quite similar. As far as I know, Exidia species are not toxic.

Stropharia rugosoannulata (Wine Cap) --caps are good edibles-- occurs during spring... usually on wood chips or straw. Agrocybe species (edibility not well-understood) also occur in similar habitat and, in my experience, are a more common spring mushroom than Wine Caps.

[4rum]

Shaggy Manes are early and when I first read of them they were included in the 'friendly four' ... morels, shaggy mane, Chicken of the Woods and puffballs as easy to identify. In further reading, I still am not sure of shaggy manes until they start getting 'inky' and well past their prime. Since last season I have bought some excellent field guides and will be looking at Shaggy Manes again this year.

[Tic]

Thank you all for your responses.

I checked out the Morel map (as I LOVE Morel's - but dont love paying $30/lb for them!) and it seems Ontario has a ways before we see any up in the great white north.

Curious as to the terroir that they can be found in, anywhere specific?

Thanks again.

[Dave W]

One type morel habitat in southern Ontario is sandy areas along the shores of the Great Lakes. I think the tree types I have heard mentioned for this type area are poplar and pine.

[Tic]

Sounds as if Morel's are going to be tough to find, not a lot of that geography around my hood -

I am however going to forage in the ravine behind my place (where I pulled about 10lbs of Elm Oysters last year) to see what I can find.

[John Smalldridge]

One of the best things you can do to learn the mushrooms in your area is to get out a few days after the rains and take pictures of the mushrooms you find and get spore prints. Then go to your guide books and try to ID your mushrooms. After you come to a proposed ID or if you can't come up with an ID, you can post them on the help ID page. This helps not just you, but also helps others on this website. You'll be surprised how much you will learn by the end of the year.

[Dave W]

Tic, the lake-shore area is just one potential Ontario morel habitat. You may also want to hunt in forested habitat, and if you know an area with lots of elm trees, then this would be a good area to check. I just mention the sandy lake shore areas because it's an interesting habitat that doesn't often get mentioned in the field guides. Even if morels are scarce in your area, you may still be able to find a couple good spots. It may take a lot of searching.

[vitog]

Tic, my son-in-law's parents live in southern Ontario, and they have a cottage on a lake north of Kingston. They regularly find morels in and around their gravel driveway. Roadsides and trailsides are one of the more consistent habitats for finding morels. That was the kind of habitat where I found my first morels in British Columbia.

[shroomersue]

Look for poplar trees... Tulip in well drained terrain...sandy soil. As the season progresses the poison ivy also likes this too unfortunately.

[rob]

Tic, as a fellow resident of, southern Ontario, I think your best bet, for early edibles, is to concentrate on morels and oysters. As Dave pointed out oysters are often found when hunting morels. As for the sandy lakeshore environment, he mentioned, I've not had the chance to search such areas. However I've read reports of the Wasaga beach area producing and years back found a great flush around Midland, while visiting. Blacks can be hard to track down here. All my finds have been by accident (lots of walking and looking), however seem to be associated with aspen and sandy soil at the end of April early May. Yellows...throw out the books that say ash and poplar. Yes I've found them associated with both, but only in super years with morels flushing everywhere. Best bet is to find an old apple orchard or fringe areas of woodlots. The hardwood stands, here, often contain old feral apples and dead-dying elms.

As for oysters, I normaly don't see them until at least mid May trending towards early June. Look for aspens which will be the prominant host. I've also seen them on elm, maple and beech. Aspens, however, would be the go too.

Last and maybe least is dryads saddle. VERY common on dead elms. Good rule of thumb; is if you see dryads there won't be morels around the same tree. The young fruitings are quite edible and tend to take on the taste of what they're cooked with. Not a bad filler mushroom when you're primary quarry is scarce.

[DufferinShroomer]

Tic, where you live you will find almost all of the morels you find under fairly freshly dead elm trees. If there are some weak/almost dead wild apple near the elms that is a bonus because morels often fruit under wild apple. You have pretty much a month to wait until the yellow morels start to fruit but you can start to scout right now. Get out onto the back roads and look for patches of elms and dont trust your memory - write down the location. Elm trees have a very distinctive profile and with a bit of practice you will learn to spot an elm at a half a mile. The thing is that each little patch of morels will fruit for something less than a week and then they stop for the year. There may be another patch up the road a bit with a slightly different microclimate that will fruit a few days earlier or later and that gives the illusion that a patch fruits for longer than it really does. When they start to fruit you dont want to be spending your time scouting for elms. You want to be driving directly to places where you previously found elm and start looking in high probability spots right away. The elms you want to be looking for arent buried deep in the forest, they are found on the edges of forests or along wee tiny creeks or the edge of farmland. Wandering through some random 500 acre forest looking for morels is a sucker's game. Sure the forest likely has some morels but they come in patches of 3 or 4 and they are darned hard to spot and far apart. A single productive dead elm can cough up 60 beauties or more. Not always but f you are going to find a lot of morels they will be under elm. As Rob said, for yellows forget all you have heard about ash or poplar and while tulip poplar might work you are quite a bit out of range for tulip poplar. Black morels are tough to find in your area. If you must go looking for them think in terms of flowering mayapple and quaking aspen as places to look. Good luck distinguishing between quaking aspen and big tooth aspen before the leaves come out. Morels dont generally happen around big tooth aspen.

Oysters are good news and bad news in southern Ontario. There are a couple of species called oysters which confuses the issue a bit. In southern Ontario the big oyster fruiting is Pleurotus populinus. These fruit in late spring exclusively on dead quaking aspen. If you are alert you can find small clusters of them towards the end of the yellow morel season but the big fruiting normally happens in the first or second week of June and it can be spectacular. Often you can fill a bushel basket in an hour or 2 if you get into a good patch. To really get the fruiting going you need a big rain - hard enough to soak the tree trunks - followed by some serious heat (a couple of days around 80F). The big fruiting lasts about a week and you will find them on fallen poplar logs and all up and down the trunks of standing dead poplar. After that big fruiting you can sometimes find P. populinas later in the year but never in enough quantity to be worth targeting them. P. ostreatus is the other pleurotus species you will find . This is a fall mushroom and in my experience it isnt anywhere near as common as the books would have you believe. If you find a dead tree with a good fruiting it can be spectacular but you cant really head into the woods knowing you will come out with a basket of fall oysters, they are more of an incidental find.

What you call an elm oyster is actually a Hypsizygus and they are pretty tasty. You are quite wrong however when you suggest that they only fruit on Manitoba maple. Most folks call Manitoba maple Box Elder when they arent on your front lawn and elm oysters will fruit on them but you are going to go hungry if you only look on box elder fror them. In fact they are called elm oyster because they will fruit on elm as well but elm is also not the most common host for them. In southern ontario the most common host is Acer rubrum the common forest red maple sometimes called soft maple. If I was going out to target elm oysters I would head for a red maple forest especially a poorly drained red maple forest and I would foret about the other possible hosts. I find most of my elm oysters in late September or early October.

In general if you are targeting oysters you want to be looking up in the trees and you want to be carrying a hiking staff that is 6-7 feet long so that you can knock down some of the clusters you cant reach. I know a guy who carries an aluminum rod that telescopes from 3 feet to about 14 feet so that he can harvest clusters up in the trees.

The southern Ontario harvesting schedule is a bit disappointing. You start with black morels around end of April or early May and that is followed by the yellow morels. Then there is sparse and sporadic oysters until the big early June oyster fruiting. After that there is basically nothing worthwhile until July when the chanterelles start and at that point all breaks loose and you find chanterelles and a bunch of bolete species and chicken of the woods, lobsters, and an assortment of minor finds and the number of species keeps expanding until the leaves come off the trees in early October and you cant find the mushrooms because of the leaf cover. Having said that you need to remember that Ontario is a big place and depending where you are the dates can vary by a week or two from location to vacation but those dates will be pretty close for where you live.

[DufferinShroomer]

Tic, I would be remiss if I didnt suggest that you hook up with the Mycological Society of Toronto. This is a wonderful organization which as part of what they do organizes forays in southern Ontario. The forays offer trips into southern Ontario forests (most within a fairly easy drive from you) where members collect mushrooms for part of a morning and spend a good chunk of the afternoon identifying everything that was found. There simply isnt a better way to expand you knowledge of mushrooms and meet folks with similar interests. Membership is 30 bucks/year/family and is I think is easily worth the price. Here is their websits:

http://www.myctor.org/

For some strange reason the 2015 foray schedule has not yet been posted but they usually start around May 1 and I would expect the first foray to happen on saturday May 2 although that isnt official. In most years they will have a dozen or so spring forays and a dozen or so fall forays. The spring forays mostly target morels and the fall forays can produce an astounding number of species collected and identified. I have seen the group collect 150 different species in 3 hours of collecting.