It’s finally fall in Oregon! Learn about Hypomyces lactiflorum or Lobster Mushrooms in this issue. We discuss mushroom dying, UV Night Forays, the Mushroom Toxin report by our Study Group and a list of our upcoming events!
President’s Message
If you’re new to mushroom hunting, it’s a big deal to successfully find, ID, and prepare your first edible mushroom all by yourself. While WVMS always recommends having an expert confirm a mushroom is safe to eat, for most folks, at some point, you’re going to rely on your own expertise in making an identification. For me, as I imagine for many people, that first solo ID was the lobster mushroom (Hypomyces lactifluorum). The telltale bright red color, crusty and bumpy surface, and, in general, absence of look-a-likes, makes this one of the easiest mushrooms to find and ID. Lobsters are now my first indicator that the fall mushroom season is kicking off – I typically start finding them inland around August 1 (though they appear earlier on the coast). This year, the inland lobster season has been a little tardy. We didn’t find our first lobsters until a few weeks into August.
You can definitely find these mushrooms in abundance (once you’ve secured a lobster mushroom spot) and many foragers face the challenge of what to do with multiple pounds of this red beauty. We grill, sauté, and basically put these mushrooms in everything. One innovative chef discovered that lobster mushrooms make fairly delicious lobster rolls! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVc_uUXwMT4 or search for “lobster mushroom lobster roll”). Best of luck out there fellow mushroom hunters and, as always, please reach out with any questions or ideas! Thank you again for being an important part of this unique community.
-Patrick Heiman
President
WVMS Member’s Event Calendar
Bookmark this page for WVMS Member Events! This calendar shows all of our planned virtual and in-person events for the year. https://www.wvmssalem.org/member-s-only-events
Annual Potluck
WVMS Member’s Event Calendar
Bookmark this page for WVMS Member Events! This calendar shows all of our planned virtual and in-person events for the year. https://www.wvmssalem.org/member-s-only-events
Annual Potluck
We’re back! After two years of missed gatherings and zoom meetings, we saw some of our fungi community in person at our first in-person potluck for the club at the end of August 2022. We rented the pavilion at the Willamette Mission State Park and everyone brought delicious food to share. Our wonderful Membership Director and Hospitality Chair, Mariane Pope, organized this event and welcomed our members with Jordan Dodge and Autumn Anglin. After a few quick announcements, we all got to the important business of eating and visiting with our veteran members and new enthusiastic members. There were about 60 people that showed up at our zero waste event.
What a success! Did we mention the food was fantastic! And a special shout-out and thanks for the folks that came early, stayed late and manned the book booth, you know who you are. Having a group to share the work is the real beauty of a club.
Forays
The fall foray season has been released! Members can find it on our website at https://www.wvmssalem.org/account/foray-schedule .
We will be doing more of the open for all members group forays (no guests allowed on forays) this year that do not require sign ups. We will also be doing some small scale forays that have a limit on how many members can attend and require members to sign up on our website. There is no limit on the amount of open for all group forays that members can attend, however members are limited to one sign up foray per foray season with an exception. In the last week of the small scale foray sign ups, if there are still open spots available, you can sign up even if you have already gone on one of these forays that season. If more people sign up for a foray than spots available we will use a lottery system to randomly select who gets to go, with a priority on members who are new and/or have never attended a foray before. We will start fall forays in September and host forays into December. Most of these fall forays will take place in the coastal mountain range and will be focused on Lobters, Chanterelles and so much more!
Look for the Fall Foray Schedule on our website https://www.wvmssalem.org/account/foray-schedule
We need foray leaders/co-leaders and hospitality volunteers. Foray leaders will be provided with a club foray location unless you have a spot you want to share with the club, but it’s not required. Foray co-leaders will assist the foray leader on our forays, duties will vary depending on the location and foray format. Hospitality will provide coffee and tea during forays and maybe a snack like fruit and vegetable slices.
I look forward to seeing you all this fall!
-Jordan Dodge Foray Director
If you would like to lead a foray, please contact us at salemmushroomclub@gmail.com and we will put you in touch with our Foray Director, Jordan.
Remember, you must be a member (no guests allowed) in good standing, take the Foray Safety Class https://www.wvmssalem.org/account/safety-class , and sign up on our website to join a foray. https://www.wvmssalem.org/account/foray-schedule
Preserving A Massive Mushroom Harvest
By Jordan Dodge
Every mushroom hunter will eventually run into the same problem. You hit the jackpot, filled your basket with delicious mushrooms and now you have to figure out what to do with them all. Besides eating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner you can preserve your mushrooms in a variety of ways so that you can enjoy them for several months to a couple years. The first thing I do before starting any preservation techniques is I thoroughly clean my mushrooms of all forest debris and dirt. It is a common misconception that mushrooms should never be cleaned with water, because it ruins them. Rinsing your mushrooms does not cause any harm or change anything with the flavor or texture of the fungi and has been scientifically proven. However it is not a good idea to soak mushrooms you intend to eat in water for any extended period of time or it will degrade the quality.
Mushrooms consist of 90% water and when you cook them they expel the majority of that water. One way to preserve your mushrooms for a few months in the freezer is to dry sauté them. To dry sauté mushrooms you want to cook them in a pan until they stop expelling water. It is important not to add anything to the mushrooms when dry sautéing, not even oil, butter or seasoning. You want to stir frequently when dry sautéing so that the mushrooms cook evenly. When they stop exuding liquid, take the pan off the heat to cool. Once cool you can divide them up into freezer bags to store for a few months in your freezer. Now you have plenty of time to use all the mushrooms you harvested before they go bad. This is the preferred method for storing a large haul of chanterelles and hedgehog mushrooms or any delicious fibrous fungi.
Certain mushrooms I prefer to dehydrate to make them taste better and to preserve them for a couple of years. I do not cook and eat certain mushrooms fresh as I don’t enjoy the way they taste. I have to dehydrate them first which amplifies the flavors I enjoy while reducing the flavors that are undesirable to me. When I dehydrate mushrooms I set my temperature to 110 degrees, I check every 1-2 hours and run until the mushrooms are completely dry then I transfer them into glass jars for storage. When the mushrooms are dry enough to store you should be able to snap a piece off without tearing it. I prefer to dehydrate Matsutake, Boletes and Morels to enhance the desirable flavors, preserve and store any excess for a couple of years. When dehydrating large fleshy mushrooms like Boletes you want to remove the pores/tubes and then slice the mushroom into 3/8 inch thick wafer like pieces to ensure they dry completely and evenly. Morels dehydrate very easily and not much prep work is needed I only cut the large ones in half so that they will fit in my dehydrator better without getting smashed.
When on extended mushroom picking trips I will use a mesh air drying rack to keep my harvest from going bad. However you need specific weather conditions to ensure your mushrooms do not go bad. The temperature needs to be 75 degrees or above with low humidity. Mushrooms will lose a considerable amount of water weight through evaporation in just 24 hours. I have observed Morels losing around 60% water weight air drying in one day under ideal conditions. When I am ready to cook with my dehydrated mushrooms I will rehydrate what I want to use and add it to some of my favorite meals like Matsutake rice balls, Morel ramen or Porcini risotto. Mushrooms do not take much time to rehydrate and they can be added directly to broths or sauces or soaked in water for a few minutes to be ready to use. You can also powder your dehydrated mushrooms to use as a seasoning or for enhancing the flavor of soups and broths.
Jordan is the Chief Foray Officer for the Willamette Valley Mushroom Society. He is a WVMS Mushroom Study Group Mentor and Mycologist. Jordan owns and operates Lone Oak Micro Farms LLC where he cultivates mushrooms grows salad greens and microgreens.
Exploring The Forest At Night- UV Light Walks
By Autumn Anglin
In the summer of 2021, I organized a Study Group foray at night during a new moon so the forest would be pitch black. We began our foray after dinner on a previously scouted path into the Sitka Spruce and Douglas-fir forest. We weren’t testing our survival skills, instead we were going on an adventure using UV lights to see what fluoresces under our lights. What Jordan and I discovered was another glowing world in neon color. That foray will forever be stuck in our minds and so I wanted to lead another one with more people deeper into the woods.
Around dusk the WVMS Funga Study Group hiked out into the Siuslaw National Forest, down a well beaten path. We all had just purchased a variety of different spectrum UV lights to take on our walk. It was still too bright for them to do any good but within an hour, as night crept in, that would change.. We stopped the group about a mile in from the trailhead and waited till our lights shined brighter than the surroundings. We wandered around looking for Monotropa uniflora (Ghost Pipes) and Hypomyces lactiflorum (Lobster Mushrooms). Then the moment came where the inky blackness turned to technicolor. The kids and I noticed all of the clothes we were wearing seemed to react to the UV lights and we had a mini dance party in the middle of the trail to get pumped for the hike back out.
I took the lead to get us back to the trailhead, and used my UV light to point out some interesting fluorescing things. The lichens on the tree bark lit up in a kaleidoscope of blues, purples and oranges. Some of the leaves were bright red and the logs filled with conks or crust fungi shocked us with their reflective galaxy. As I led the group out, it became too dark to see where we were stepping and so we started to warn the next person behind us about possible tripping hazards. Everyone was fully aware and in awe of the magic.
During our adventure someone saw a fern that glowed bright yellow green. Jim Scheppke was able to capture that in a photo that was equally impressive. I found out later that that fern was dead and that fluorescent substance was some kind of fungi or bacteria breaking down the leaf.
I stayed with a cluster of Monotropa uniflora for about 15 minutes, photographing the flower heads using my Canon 80D and the UV light spotlighting the parts I wanted brightest. The stigma glowed a turquoise ring while the stamen anthers glowed a tangerine orange. This was all set against the purple blue of the petals and stems.
I also found a great patch of fruticose lichen that was attached to the bark of a Douglas-fir tree. When I zoomed in, it looked like the coral reefs under the sea branching in clusters. Sometime in the future I would like to do some UV macrophotography to really see how the light brings out those tiny worlds.
While most of us had 395nm UV Lights, Henry upgraded his to a really bright 395-405nm UV light. His light was a bit more expensive than ours, but really stole the show. We all called Henry over to look at something we had seen, all of us curious about what this specimen looked like under his light.
The colors in light visible to humans (400-700nm) are determined by the light wavelength. Humans can see a limited spectrum from red to violet compared to other creatures like birds and insects. There are other colors beyond our visible spectrum that exist and are invisible to us. As you can see in this graphic, there is a range of color above the red that is called infra-red. And the color below our visible spectrum of violet is called ultraviolet. This is where the UV lights work to fluoresce pigments in the fluorescent or phosphorescent to emit visible light.
“The ultraviolet spectrum is broken down into subcategories depending on wavelength:
450 - 400 nm Violet, (visible light)
400 - 320 nm UVA, Long Wave, Black Light
320 - 280 nm UVB, Medium Wave
280 - 100 nm Short Wave” (https://www.gloeffex.com/blogs/technical/uv-spectrum)
“Ultraviolet radiation is divided into three regions: UV-A: 315-400nm, UV-B: 280-315 nm, and UV-C: 100-280 nm. UV can be associated with adverse health effects depending on duration of exposure and the wavelength.” (https://www.safety.rochester.edu/ih/uvlight.html) UV lights sold non-commercially are readily available and pretty safe to use because they have a longer wavelength than the more damaging industrial UV lights with shorter wavelengths than 320nm. Black Lights are often used in detecting counterfeit bills, at nightclubs and concerts, and even as a way to detect pet stains. If you are looking to purchase a UV light for a night foray just make sure your light is between 320nm-400nm or UVA. The longer the wavelength the safer it is. UVC lights are the most dangerous and are only used by trained professionals in protective gear. UVC lights include germicidal lamps that are used to disinfect the air.
The lights that most of us use are these rechargeable multi-lights we purchased off Amazon. They are pretty bright with the option to focus the beam. I liked that they are rechargeable so I don’t have to waste batteries and the charge lasts for about 10 hours. It is best if everyone in the group has their own UV light so people can investigate things on their own.
I encourage you to go on a night walk, even if it is just in your neighborhood. If you are interested you can also join the iNaturalist group UV Fluorescent Organisms, and show off the observations you make. https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/uv-fluorescent-organisms When you get out there and look at the world at night you will find more than fungi that glow. Look for fluorescent insects and rocks too!
References:
Make It From Mycelium
At WVMS we are known for our potlucks and great mushroom dishes. The goal of the ‘Kitchen’ section is to highlight and gather recipes so that in one year’s time we have a cookbook. It will be the classics the club is known for and new recipes from our members.
So how do we do this? In each newsletter we will post a recipe featuring mushrooms that are in season for you to try. We would like you to post your pictures of your cooking adventures on our Facebook page or the WVMS Google Group . Your participation will earn you a ticket into our raffle, frequency and prizes will be determined.
The second way to participate is to send us your favorite mushroom recipe. If there is a story behind your recipe, include it. Please post it to our Google Group or you can email it to salemmushroomclub@gmail.com and our board will forward it on.
The second section Arts and Craft will post activities using mushrooms. Try them with your family and friends and post the fun on our Facebook page or the WVMS Google Group.
In the Kitchen
Thank you Kerry Timberlake for sharing your first Lobster mushroom finds of the 2022 season at our recent potluck in a great Cool Summer Soup, it sure was tasty. She shared her recipe with me over the phone and wants everyone to know how adaptable this recipe is. “Use whatever vegetables that will compliment your mushrooms, and the broth and milk selection can be changed to fit your dietary needs”
Cool Summer Lobster Mushroom Soup
Start with a 2-3 nice firm Lobster mushrooms and mince them and add to the pot
Use a dozen or so Marzano or Roma tomatoes de-skin them and chop them, add to the pot along with
About a quart of your favorite broth (Kerry used Chicken)
Heat this to a simmer
Add half a chopped onion, minced garlic, 2-3 stalks of celery minced, tablespoon of oregano, and a diced Anaheim pepper, and 2 cups of cauliflower florets,
Cook till vegetables are tender
Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper, add some cilantro at this point too
Blend the soup with an immersion blender or other method of your choice
Cool the soup for a few hours
Add about a cup of milk of your choice. Adjust seasoning to taste.
serve and enjoy
New York Style Lobster Mushroom Chowder
Another of my favorite Lobster mushroom soup recipes is a Lobster Mushroom Chowder. I make it like my favorite NY Style Clam Chowder, that's the red one, not the cream style one, substituting the diced Lobster mushroom for the clams.
Another trick I use is to par boil my diced lobster mushrooms in water before adding to a recipe. Use that water as your broth. This trick works really well in Lobster Mushroom Risotto.
Mariane Pope, Hospitality, Membership and Food lover!
Arts and Crafts
Lobster mushrooms make a great protein fiber dye. They are one of the easiest to dye with and great for beginners. During this Lobster Mushroom season, try gathering a few to dye some wool or silk with.
You can dye with fresh or dried Lobster Mushrooms. Collect and dehydrate your mushrooms and save them till you are ready to work with them. To dehydrate your mushrooms for dying, you can cut off the parts that are most red, and dehydrate them at about 95℉ for a few hours or until the mushrooms are crispy. Store them in a jar or air tight plastic bag in the dark till you are ready to use them.
To prepare your materials to dye, you need to clean and then mordant your fiber. If you are using wool, make sure you have scoured it properly to remove the lanolin from the fibers. To mordant your fiber you can use Alum (potassium aluminum sulfate) or Iron (ferrous sulfate). Make sure you read the MSDS sheets on their proper handling and cautions.
To mordant about 4 oz of fiber add 1 TBLS + 2 TSP of alum and 1 TSP of cream of tartar to 2 quarts of water.
In a well ventilated room, or preferably outside, dissolve the mordants in a non reactive container with very hot water.
Place wool in warm clean water to prepare it for the mordant solution. After the chemicals have dissolved, add the wet wool to the mordant solution and bring to a simmer for 30 min. Then hold at 195℉ for up to 1 hour.
Let the wool cool in the mordant bath for 20 min. Remove the fiber and lay over a non-reactive rod to drip. Rinse well before dying.
You can store the fiber in a damp cloth for 24 hours, or use it immediately. Alternatively, you could dry it for later use.
To dye with the Lobster Mushroom you will need a 1:1 ratio of dried mushroom to dry fiber.
Fill a container (a bucket works well for this) with the crushed dried mushrooms and let them rehydrate overnight.
When you are ready to begin dying, add the mushrooms to a non reactive pot in a well ventilated area (trust me you want to do this outside- it smells like a seafood buffet) and cover and bring to 180℉ for one hour.
Let the mixture cool and strain out all of the mushroom chunks, being careful not to lose any liquid and placing mushrooms in a cheese cloth. This step is good so you don’t have to pick those chunks out of your wool later! Now put the mushroom filled cheese cloth back in the pot to dye.
If your wool is wet, make sure the temperature of your wool and the mushroom bath is the same, or it will felt. If your fiber is dry, you can put it directly into the warm bath.
Once you added the fiber, you can simmer the contents at about 170℉ for an hour.
If you want to change the color you can adjust the pH by adding either vinegar or a washing soda to the pot and letting that soak. Make sure to have some pH strips on hand so you can keep adjusting it.
Let that cool and sit in the dye bath as long as possible. Rinse with clean room temperature water and ring out then lay on a towel out of direct sunlight to dry.
You can find more information about dying with mushrooms here:
Mushroom and Lichen Dyers United FB group- Great place to ask questions!
The Rainbow Beneath My Feet by Alan Bessette and Arleen R. Bessette
Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper, Pigments & Myco-stix by Miriam C. Rice
Study Group Update | WVMS FUNGA
The study group just finished Module 6 in August. We all worked together to present on Mycotoxins and put together an in depth presentation on the toxin, its chemical compound, the effects on our bodies, and some treatments (if any). This was a great lesson on the dangers fungi can possess and why we should never eat a raw mushroom or one you can not 100% identify. Each of us took a toxin and built a presentation in Google Slides together, then over Zoom, we each presented our slide. The presenters were Henry Young, Autumn Anglin, Jordan Dodge, Diana Reeck, Dale Baer, Kerry Timberlake, Richard Iltis, Brian Sly-Haley, Dallyce Vetter, Margaret Spahn and Jim Scheppke. We discussed α-amanitin, Gyromitrin→MMH (Monomethylhydrazine), Orellanine, Muscimol / Ibotenic acid, Muscarine, Psilocybin and Psilocin, Russuphelins, Agaricus “barficus” group, A. xanthodermus , Puffballs, earthballs and Dermatitis. Our sources for the information are listed in the presentation and will be a good thing to explore. Remember that in addition to mushroom foragers misidentifying and eating something, dogs, pets and kids could accidentally eat something.
If you think you have been poisoned by a mushroom, get help immediately. You can call your local poison control 1-800-222-1222, National https://www.aapcc.org/centers Oregon https://www.ohsu.edu/oregon-poison-center and make sure to report it to NAMA, even if it is just an upset stomach https://namyco.org/poisonings.php .
Mushroom Poisoning Quick Guides
Here is a script to ask the person who may have been poisoned:
Ask the following questions to ascertain specific history:
When were the mushrooms ingested (or when was the patient exposed to vapors of cooking mushrooms)?
When did each symptom begin?
Where were the mushrooms found?
Were other species ingested?
Did others become ill after eating the mushrooms?
You can find WVMS Funga’s Mycotoxin presentation and slide deck here: https://www.wvmssalem.org/account/studygroup-resources
In June, the board approved the purchase of a microscope for the club! We just received our brand new compound microscope with 4 objectives (X4,X10, X40, X100) two sets of eyepieces 10X and 25X, and a USB microscope camera. Jordan and I set it up for the test run after unboxing it at my kitchen table. We looked at some spores I had sitting on a slide and were so impressed by the quality of the images.
I brought the microscope, computer, slides, razor blades and coverslips to our study group foray at the end of August. There we all did our best to section the gills of the Pluteus I had found earlier that day with Henry. We were looking for the cornuate cystidia as well as the spores. Cystidia in the hymenium (spore bearing surface of a mushroom) are terminal (end) cells of the hyphae that will not produce basidiospores (spores formed on the basida), or sterile cells. Cornuate cystidia is the shape of the cystida with the apical (top) appendages in the shape of horns. Although the function of Cystida is not well known, it could possibly serve as air traps, physically hold adjacent gills apart, and aid in humidity control. These structures are not visible with the naked eye, and are such an important part of identifying a mushroom.
WVMS Funga wants to congratulate Dallyce Vetter on her acceptance into the Biology program at Leiden University in The Netherlands! She is pursuing her Master’s degree in Biology and hopefully going to work with fungi. She was a vibrant and enthusiastic study group partner and will be missed. You can keep up with her adventures on her blog https://dalsdutchadventures.wordpress.com/ and observations on iNaturalist @dallycev https://www.inaturalist.org/people/dallycev
You can read more about the study group here https://www.wvmssalem.org/fungi-study-groups
Read the syllabus, and supply list here https://www.wvmssalem.org/fungi-modules
Get to know your Mentors here : https://www.wvmssalem.org/mentors
Check out the resources we will use here https://www.wvmssalem.org/account/studygroup-resources
We would love to hear what you are learning about. Post it to the Google Forum https://groups.google.com/g/wvms-members so we can discuss this with you or join in on a Mushroom ID Session.
Book Club
We are going to read The Overstory by Richard Powers for the summer. Join a zoom discussion of the book on September 24th at 6pm!
Join Zoom Meeting:
Topic: WVMS Summer Book Club Discussion
Time: Sep 24, 2022 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 458 743 3965
Mushroom ID Sessions
The Mushroom ID Sessions have been so informative and they’re recorded for those of you who could not make it. You can find the recordings on our website under the “Education” tab https://www.wvmssalem.org/mushroom-id-sessions.
The next Mushroom ID Session will be hosted by Autumn on October 4th. If you can’t make it and want something identified, you can email photos and a detailed description of the habitat, cap, stipe, gills, color, odor, and any bruising or staining, along with the color of the spore print to salemmushroomclub@gmail.com.
Mushroom Sessions will be every other Tuesday through December.
October 4th at 7pm
October 18th at 7pm
November 1st at 7pm
November 15th at 7pm
November 29th at 7pm
December 6th at 7pm
December 20th at 7pm
2022 WVMS Mushroom Hunt:
We started a new iNaturalist project to invite WVMS members to join us in sharing their fungi finds. We will use these observations in our Mushroom ID sessions and further education in field ID. If you like to find mushrooms and have a smartphone, then you can participate.
Step 1: Create a FREE iNaturalist account: https://www.inaturalist.org/signup
Step 2: Join this project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wvms-mushroom-hunt
Step 3: Take good photos with your camera or smartphone and create your first observation.
Any fungi or slime mold observation you make will automatically show up in this project. It will be a great way to keep track of all of the fungi we find and, in doing so, we can all get a little better at identifying mushrooms.
If you have a smartphone you can download the app https://www.inaturalist.org/
Are you new to iNaturalist and can’t figure it out? Email salemmushroomclub@gmail.com and I will create an online zoom class to help get you set up.
Contacts
Website: www.wvmssalem.org
Email: salemmushroomclub@gmail.com
Board Members: President- Patrick Heiman, Vice President- Autumn Anglin, Treasurer- Joe Harchanko, Membership Director- Mariane Pope, Secretary- Diane Highberger, Foray Coordinator- Jordan Dodge, Minister of Propaganda- John Marikos, Hospitality Committee- Mariane Pope