Mushrooms are in the woods

We took a drive out in the country yesterday just cruising and I seen something white on an old dead log laying on the ground back in the woods aways. I yelled at George with excitement “mushrooms” and he threw on the breaks. We pulled over and half the log had Elephant ear mushrooms on it. I got out and picked for 15 minutes. We got back home and while cleaning them another guy come over and had 4 Goatsbeard mushrooms about 4 pounds apiece in a sack that a guy gave to him. The rain we’ve had in Iowa the last month is making the mushrooms grow better then last year. Now’s the time to go looking if your a mushroom fan, this might be a pretty good fall for them.

Got any pics? Have no idea which fall mushrooms are safe to eat.

No sorry Whitetails, Roland had the Goatsbeards and I didn’t take any pics of the Elephant ears. I got them home and put them in a bowl of saltwater to soak, had some for lunch, they were good.

Here’s a description of the Elephant ears. They are flat and come in all sizes from coffee cup saucer size and smaller to as big as an eating plate. They grow on the sides of dead and living trees but mostly on dead trees. They can grow at ground level and up in the trees in fact Rolan the one with the goatsbeards last night said he shot some out of a tree with a 45 that fell into the water and he went over and picked them up out of his boat, they were too high to reach from the ground and over water, 20′ or more. The coloring is white and they are flat, imagine an eating plate with a stem about an inch in dia. coming out one end and thats attached to a tree. The stem almost always comes out of the side but I have seen them with a stem coming from the indirect center. They aren’t all this big eigther but easier to describe.

There is another close cousin of the Elephant ear and they are called Oysters. The coloring is darker on the top between a light brown/tan to a light gray/brown and they are also white on the bottom. The bottoms of both mushrooms are finned from where they come from the stem and the fins grow to the edge. These mushrooms are the only ones in the woods around here that look like this and if you take a piece off of eighter of them and taste it it isn’t bitter like inedibles taste. Roland said he was bear hunting one time in Canada and ran across some and he filled his t-shirt with them, he said his Indian guide didn’t even know what kind they were or if they were edible. Get a pocket sized mushroom book and take it too the woods with you, there are quite a few edible types and if they grow in Canada I’m sure they grow in Minnesota and Wisconsin, especially along the rivers and lakes where its moist.

I’ll take my camera next time I go and get some pictures because alot of people here on the site want to know what alot of them look like, I’ll try to get the best pictures I can.

looking forward to the pix.

i started picking hen of the woods a couple falls back.

not as good as morels, IMHO, but still mighty tasty.

will have to keep an eye out for the goats and elephants while deer and turkey hunting here in a couple weeks.

Here’s what the Goatsbeards look like. Their kind of hard to describe but anything that looks like this is a goatsbeard because there’s no other mushroom that looks like them. Imagine if you took a hand full of oak leaves by the stems and held them. Now imagine those leaves being anywhere from an 1/8th” to 1/4″ thick. The bigger the mushroom the larger and longer the leaves. The bigger goatsbeards have the thicker leaves, the smaller ones have the thinner leaves. They are dark colored on the top and range from a brownish to almost a black and the underside of the leaves are white to cream. Imagine holding a hand full of oak leaves with these traits and you’ll be holding a goatsbeard. The Czechs down this way love em and so does everybody else. These are the grand daddy of size and they get big, big as a no.5 washtub or a gunny sack and will weigh 35 to 40 lbs. All you have to do is check every dead log on the ground and if their in the woods where you live that’s where they will be. They don’t grow in trees like others do, just on the ground by dead logs. These are the stronger tasting mushrooms, a very mushroomy tasting type and they are good. People down this way including me use an egg dip with cracker crumbs instead of flour but flours good too for the coating. You cut the leaves off the main stem, wash, coat then into the frying pan. Good stuff!