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Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus)

"Is that an oyster mushroom?" I asked Lucy as we walked along our regular morning path down the driveway and through our floodplain woods.  I had followed the same route approximately 1,500 times over the last four years, never paying any attention to the dead elm tree standing beside the path.  But this morning, dense fog made the pale mushrooms almost glow in the dim woods.

The only wild mushrooms I feel comfortable eating are morels, but I've been picking mushrooms just like these off backyard logs for a couple of years.  So I started to run through a litany of field marks.  Mushrooms growing in a cluster from a dead tree?  Check.  Off-centered, short stem with pale gills running nearly to the base?  Check.  Cap pale in color and smooth on top (often becoming damp with morning dew or fog?)  Check. 

I went home and flipped through a couple of field guides for more information.  They admonished me to peer a bit more closely and see if the gills had non-serrated edges --- yep.  Were the stems hairy?  I had to zoom way in to tell, but soon discovered that the stems were indeed quite fuzzy near the base.

The real clincher came when I stood on tiptoe and plucked the mass of mushrooms off the tree --- they smelled exactly like my cultivated oyster mushrooms.  Edible Wild Mushrooms of Noth America: A Field-to-Kitchen Guide also set my mind at ease with one short sentence: "There are no toxic look-alikes."  Mark and I opted to eat the whole bowlful for lunch --- they were delicious.

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