Friday, May 25, 2012

Oyster Mushroom Yum-Yum

Here's our first edible mushroom this year. The Oyster mushroom, Pleurotus ostreatus, is a great mushroom. It is not only tasty ,it is also fairly common and fruits from now 'till hard frost. Most of these were a little on the old side but they still made some fine cream of mushroom soup. All of yesterdays finds were on smallish aspen trees. We found many on trees that had them on last year which is common. Remember where you find them, they will probably fruit there again this year.We pick another variety of oyster that appears to prefer maple trees and only seems to fruit in autumn. We ended up with a couple pounds of usable mushroom. We had a good hard rain last night which should start a lot of mushrooms growing in a few days. Most wild mushrooms are very good dried and it is time to replenish our supply.
We found one other edible on our walk, the Pheasant Back, Polyporus squamosus , but it was much to old and tough to eat.  As always, a word of caution, if you can not positively identify it, don't eat it.

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