My-silly-umm… Running with Fun-guys – A wild foraging adventure
Weekend shenanigans took me on a pine needle laden discovery of forest fodder. It’s mushroom season in the land down under and my are those potent little pioneers out in their full splendour tempting the life that surrounds them with their toxic hues and porous pillows of shroomy flesh.
I have never been on a mushroom hunt before and I am very conscious of how dangerous such an excursion can turn out to be. Good intentions and a little bit of curiosity can send you into a hasty trip to the hospital and perhaps an early beginning in the afterlife. I decided it be wise to seek some guidance, so I enlisted the expertise of a seasoned forager to gain a firsthand understanding of the underground ancient network. I was shown a smorgasbord of species, some simple identifiers, where to look, how to pick and plenty of research material to get buried in should the spores of interest take flight and grow its own network of knowledge in my interest-sphere.
Armed with the knowledge of the fungi, my friend and I took to the forest like two wildlings on edge of a scavenging contest. The day’s choreographed landscape for the forage could not have been any more pristine. The weeks past harboured fresh wintery rain creating the ideal conditions for a break-out of the mycelium families as they congregate to share in their yearly reunion. The sun god, Ra blessed our cold skin with it’s warmth and so injected a spring in our gleeful adventure.
There were all kinds of species growing in their mycelium concentration, some highly dangerous life takers like death caps, some life givers like slippery jacks and ink caps - for you vegans out there, ink caps can be used to make black pasta, like squid ink pasta - some eye-saws like glowing ghost mushies and of course some mind messers like laughing gyms and toadstools, yep, straight from the story books! This little earth star mushroom is incredibly unique, let me show you how it disperses its spores.
We stuck to what we knew because we decided it wasn’t time for us to depart this world yet, let me introduce to you the saffron milk cap.
At first glace I would say this bad boy looked as toxic as a wasteland of bubbling acid due to its vibrant orangey hue and the fact that a disturbed one can turn green as the damaged flesh starts oxidising. Rest assured, it is not toxic, and they were popping up in the plethora, so naturally we focused our attention on these fresh fungi. There are many orange mushrooms out there which could be confused with a saffron milk cap but there are tell tale signs to look for like a white stalk and white gills - if they are white they are not saffrons. The saffron once cut also produces an orange coloured milky residue, if you rub your finger across the flesh it should colour your finger a vibrant saffron colour.
A shroomy factoid:
Gills are a modern feature of a mushroom, the first mushroom growths displayed their flesh in pore form and some mushrooms today still hold this form, like the porcini, pictured here.
The only thing missing today was a truffle hunting pooch! Can you imagine a saffron truffle wild rice risotto, I can! If you intend on going on a mushroom hunt for yourself, do your homework and seek a professional who can help you identify what you’re picking. Do not go solely off the information here as I am an inexperienced newbie!
** Wild forest stuffing