October 12th, 2023: As mentioned in the last post, earlier in the week I had wandered into the edge of a new Issaquah forest that showed some promise. This time I let the car do the work and started from a trailhead on top of the ridge. It turned out to be an inspired choice as my first patch of shaggy manes was popping up all of five feet past the last backyard in the adjoining neighborhood. Knowing their tendency to turn into black goo within hours of picking, I left them in place with the hope that they would avoid detection for a couple more hours.
The proper trail turned out to be equally productive with piles of new edible mushrooms for harvest. The purple above is an old reishi, my first. Its one of the more famous medicinal specimen but I was free of daycare viruses that day and left it in place.
The next major find was the shaggy parasol. I had to do a little bit of trailside youtube to feel confident in the ID but once confirmed, they seemed to be everywhere. Besides their distinctive cap, their ring is practically detached and can often be slid up the stem and the woody stem when split will quickly discolor a orange/brown color. I had heard its best to harvest them closer to the lollipop stage and with so many around, I could afford to be selective in picking enough to fill the skillet. Stacked on top of that I added a couple pounds of fresh oysters (sample below).
My boneheaded move of the week was finding this beautiful cauliflower mushroom and not taking it. In my head I was thinking cauliflowers came in a lot of varieties that are hard to differentiate and not all of them are kind to the belly... but that is actually coral mushrooms. Instead of doing just the tiniest bit of research, I only grabbed a small morsel and left pounds of the good stuff for the bugs. Right next to the cauliflower was this monster russula brevipes that seemed to be only partially infected by the lobster mushroom.
The last new edible for the list was a gooey one - witch's butter. Its another example of fungi on fungi parasitism. In this case the victim is a stereum fan fungi that morphs from looking similar to a turkey tail into a lump of orange brain jelly. Similar to the alpine jelly cones, you can impress your young children by eating some raw forest goo that is tasteless and most importantly not toxic:
That wraps up the mushroom reporting on this visit but I wanted to share a final picture. This guy was blowing leaves off a miles long trail. I don't think this is a standard procedure for the county parks but if you are going to be packing a big motor on your back all day, he wins for the best office.
PS - The shaggy manes were still there and made a tasty black risotto.
October 19th, 2023: I returned to the Issaquah forest with high hopes to repeat on shaggy manes (nope), shaggy parasols (didn't happen), and cauliflowers (not a trace). Instead I found a handful of corals that didn't detract from the butter/batter they were fried in. I also think I found a couple different kinds of honey mushrooms but I'm not well versed in IDing them and they don't actually taste like honey so my motivation is low...
The big yield was the most prolific oyster log I've ever seen (over my vast one year of paying attention).
And one safety message to close this one out. I thought I had stumbled on a batch of shaggy parasols but it was actually a look-a-like that I hadn't heard about. The caps were the same size with the center dark patch, they looked shaggy adjacent, the young ones had the same lollipop look, and they shared a woody stem. The stem did not discolor when snapped but I was dismissive of that result since it was so chilly out... But it did slow me down enough to notice the gills on this mushroom were grey instead of white. Likely these were false parasols (aka The Vomiter) and I narrowly avoided the family putting a hard stop to my foraging!
