Mushroom Obsession RSS

angel wings, boletes, chanterelles, children, golden chanterelles, hedgehogs, lobsters, Zeller's Boletes -

Every week I'm out there (on the slopes of Mt. Rainier) hunting this fall, there seems to be a different variety of exotic mushrooms predominating. At first (about a month or so ago) it was Lobsters, loads of Lobsters. Then shortly after that the Chanterelles started, but didn't come in as strong as usual; but after the rains what did come in strong were the Boletes: Fat Jacks, Zeller's Boletes (pictured at right), even Admirables.We've had a few weeks with almost no rain, now, and the Boletes are drying out and thinning out a bit. But what is coming on...

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boletes, chanterelles, Lobster Mushroom, lobsters, Puffball Mushrooms, Shaggy Parasols -

Fall is our favorite time of the year here in the Pacific Northwest ... because the weather is nice, the colors great, but mostly because of the mushrooms! They are springing up everywhere. Recent forays have yielded lots of Boletes (Slippery Jacks and Admirables), Golden Chanterelles, Lobsters, Puffballs, and others. This blog shares more about upcoming forays in the Puget Sound, and also a status report on cultured Shaggy Parasols now springing up.

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Lobster Mushroom, lobsters -

It's August 21. It's warm and dry and the skies are filled with smoke from British Colombia (and some Washington) wildfires, but we had a decent rain at the beginning of last week, and I've been reading reports of lobster mushrooms appearing in Oregon. So I decided to take a few hours off today and do some look-see down in the Gifford Pinchot. And I did find lobsters -- all of them near streams at the 2,500-foot level southeast of Ashford, WA. I collected about a dozen in a two-hour foray. None were much larger than my fist, all were...

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morels -

It's become tradition for my son Nathan and I to head to Eastern Washington in the Mother's Day timeframe. This is about the time the Morel Mushrooms begin showing their lovely little heads, typically in areas that have been ravaged by forest fires the prior summer. This year we started early in May in some minor burn areas north of Leavenworth. We've had good luck in the past in the general vicinity. But we found nary a mushroom, so we did what we should have done earlier and paid the local (Wenatchee) Ranger Station a call. (The rangers are always...

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The weather was originally forecast to be dry and sunny on Saturday. So we planned a foray. Last year, we were hunting into mid-November, when the weather finally turned cold and rainy (then snowy). We typically hunt at the 2,000-3,000 foot elevation on the southwestern slopes of Mt. Rainier, in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. We have a spot where we find a wide variety of nice fall mushrooms. Streams run through it, and the rainforest is typically quite damp. It's not always the easiest hiking, but it is beautiful, and we enjoy the hike regardless of what we find...

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