The snag that hosted my first wild-collected Oyster Mushrooms blew over in a storm last week, so I couldn't resist cutting it up and bringing it home for easier mushroom-picking.  The first step, of course, was to pluck the mushrooms that had sprouted up out of the log since it fell over --- I put them in my hat for safe-keeping.



Next, I talked Mark into firing up the chainsaw.  Another (non-edible) fungus had colonized part of the dead tree, so I asked him to cut between the two fungi, then to cut the oyster mushroom section up into chunks small enough to lift.  Mark went ahead and cut the rest of the log up into firewood while he was at it.



I carted my new oyster mushroom logs home to live in the forest garden island under our biggest peach tree.  I don't want to keep them with my inoculated mushroom logs since I'm pretty sure there are some "weed" fungi mixed in with the oyster spawn.  Instead, I'll let my half-wild mushroom logs fruit at will, creating high quality compost for my peach tree in the process.

After teaching us about choice edible mushrooms, Johnny Stanley sent us each home with a big hunk of Hen of the Woods (Grifola frondosa), hacked off the ten pound mushroom he had brought as a demonstration.  Edible Wild Mushrooms of North America: A Field-to-Kitchen Guide points out only two field marks to keep in mind when identifying Hen of the Woods:

• First, look for sheer size.  Hen of the Woods comes in clusters at least six inches by four inches, and is often much bigger.  The cluster looks a bit like a clump of coral, made up of pale gray or brown fans with a whitish, pore-dotted underside.
• Next, take a look at the habitat.  Hen of the Woods grows on the ground in the woods, generally at the base of a tree or stump.

The only lookalike species are all edible, so even if you confuse a Cauliflower Mushroom for a Hen of the Woods, there's no harm done.

I cooked up our door prize as part of a broccoli and mushroom omelet.  The stems of the Hen of the Woods are too tough and have to be discarded, so I just cut off the fan-shaped caps, tore them into pieces, and sauteed them in a bit of oil with broccoli florets --- both softened at about the same speed.  Throw in some seasoned eggs, and the result was every bit as good as our homegrown shiitakes and oysters.

Hen of the Woods is usually found on or near oak trees and will fruit in the same spot for several years.  Also known as Maitake, the species can be cultivated at home, but is less dependable than shiitakes and oysters.  To grow Hen of the Woods at home, inoculate a freshly cut oak stump with storebought spawn, or inoculate oak logs then bury them horizontally so that one long side of the log is just above the soil surface.  Be prepared to wait 1 to 3 years for fruit.

Johnny Stanley's mushroom program at the High Knob Naturalist Rally helped me put mushroom hunting into perspective.  Americans (and I'm no exception) tend to be quite mycophobic, assuming that most wild mushrooms are out to kill us, but the truth is that there are only a handful of really poisonous mushooms and perhaps twice that many choice edibles in our area.  Learn both types, and you're ready to hit the woods with a collecting basket.

Our guide explained that southwest Virginia has two main mushroom seasons --- spring (late March to mid May) and fall.  I've listed the edibles he considers worth collecting below, broken down by season.  Bolded species are the edibles that deserve the beginner's attention because they are the most tasty, easiest to identify, and most common around here.

Morel (Morchella sp.) --- late March to May  (start hunting when the bloodroot blooms)
Chicken Mushroom (Laetiporus sulphureus) --- spring and fall
Oyster Mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) --- spring and fall
Puffball (Calvatia sp.) --- spring and fall
Shaggy Mane (Coprinus comatus) --- spring and fall
Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) --- June to September
Eastern Cauliflower Mushroom (Sparassis crispa) --- July to October
Meadow Mushroom (Agaricus campestris) --- August to September
Bearded Tooth (Hericium erinaceus) --- August to November
Honey Mushroom (Armillariella mellea) --- August to November
Hen of the Woods (Grifola frondosa) --- September to November

Before heading out, it's worth nailing down the identities of the seriously poisonous species too: fly agaric, destroying angel, false morel, panther, and jack-o-lantern.  The good news is that these poisonous mushrooms are easy to identify and (in most cases) are hard to confuse with the edibles.  If you stick to eating the five species I've bolded above, the only poisonous mushrooms you have to be concerned with are the false morel (distinguished from the true morel by the solid stem) and the jack-o-lantern (distinguished from the oyster mushroom and hen of the woods by its brilliant orange color and relatively long stem, and from the chicken mushroom by the presence of gills beneath the cap.)

I've refrained from eating mushrooms in the past because there are simply so many species that my field guides don't cover them all --- for example, this brilliant orange shelf fungus doesn't seem to show up in my texts.  I'm beginning to understand that the vast majority of mushrooms are neither choice edibles nor highly poisonous.  We can enjoy their fleshy beauty while out hunting the the five tastiest mushrooms in our area --- morels, chickens, oysters, puffballs, and hen of the woods.

"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.

Does the photo above look like a rose?  Nope --- it's a Purple-Gilled Laccaria mushroom (Laccaria ochropurpurea) or a close relative.  Here are the identification marks to look for, beyond the beautiful purple-brown gills.

The cap typically has an indentation in the center, as you can see to the left.  Cap color is less distinctive, since young mushrooms have colorful caps that fade to nearly white in older specimens (like mine.)

Gills are attached to the stalk (as you can see below).  In younger specimens, the gills are regularly arranged, but in older specimens (like the one at the top of this post), the gills become quite ruffled.

Speaking of the stalk, its color can be variable, but the texture is generally the same.  Notice how the stem appears rough and fibrous.  There is no veil or ring.



Spores are whitish or pale lilac.  There's no need to take a spore print, though, because the spores are copious and are quite obvious against the purple gills.

(This picture is just for prettiness --- I enjoyed the way the cap turned up and cracked open on my oldest specimen.)

The Purple-gilled Laccaria grows on the ground under oak trees, popping up in the fall.  Edible Wild Mushrooms of North America: A Field-to-Kitchen Guide notes that Purple-gilled Laccaria and the related Common Laccaria (Laccaria laccata) "make mediocre side dishes but deserve rave reviews for their wonderful contribution to soups, sauces, and gravies."  I'm about 98% confident in my identification, but don't feel hungry enough to give them a shot, even though the same guide notes that all of the easily confused Laccaria species are non-poisonous.

Our Appalachian forests are chock full of mushrooms, many of which are both edible and delicious.  But I wouldn't blame you if you choose to pass them by --- there are also plenty of poisonous fungi around, some of which are so potent that a single mushroom dropped into the municipal water supply could take out an entire town (or so the conventional wisdom goes.)

But at least one mushroom should enter your diet, even if you're afraid to partake of the rest.  Morels, also known as dry land fish, have such uniquely convoluted caps that they're hard to mistake for anything else (except, possibly, the false morel.)  Unfortunately, morels can be surprisingly hard to find, and I've come home empty-handed more times than I can count.

That's why I was thrilled to read Appalachian Feet's How to Find Edible Morel Mushrooms (With Recipes.)  Eliza takes the guesswork out of morel hunting.  Did you know that there are four different morel species that can be found in our area, and each species likes to grow under a different set of trees?  That morels won't pop up until the soil temperature has reached at least 52 degrees Fahrenheit?

The Great Morel website keeps an up-to-date map of morel sightings across the U.S., so it's easy to find out when spring has advanced far enough for morels to be popping up in your woods.  Currently, they've reached the North Carolina Piedmont, so I'd expect to see them within the next week or so around here.  It's time to grab a field guide and prepare your tastebuds for a treat!

Although the animals are the most obvious feature of the east half of the River Trail, a few plants are bound to catch your eye.  In particular, you will have good views of an invasive plant that every naturalist should know.  Japanese Knotweed grows in dense stands along some sections of the Clinch, crowding out all native vegetation.  Although entirely unrelated, Japanese Knotweed bears a superficial resemblance to Giant Cane, and the knotweed tends to create conditions a bit reminiscent of the canebrakes that would have once grown in the same habitat.  Unfortunately, while canebrakes were home to many native plants and animals, Japanese Knotweed is a newcomer shunned by North America’s flora and fauna.

Once Japanese Knotweed catches a foothold along a river or streambank, it is nearly impossible to eradicate.  The plant spreads rapidly using underground rhizomes that can grow for up to two dozen feet in every direction from the parent plant, pushing new shoots up through pavement or anything else that gets in its way.  During floods, small sections of the Japanese Knotweed stems break free, sprouting and creating new infestations downstream.  Some land managers control their Japanese Knotweed populations using herbicides, but application is tricky along important waterways like the Clinch where chemicals dripping into the water could wipe out downstream mussel populations.

Scientists are stumped, but the ingenuity of common folks should not be taken lightly.  Peter Becker had been eating the young shoots of Japanese Knotweed along the streams near his home in Germany for years before he even realized that the plant was not native to the region.  He cooked up stems into delicious jams that tasted a bit like rhubarb as well as creating a savory relish to be eaten with meats and stir-fry.  He was thrilled to find out that Japanese Knotweed is a great source of resveratrol, a chemical that is also found in red wine and that many people think may be the cause of the wine’s healing properties.  Peter was less thrilled, though, when he learned that his gourmet feast came from a plant poised to wipe out a rare streamside plant community.

Rather than wringing his hands and giving in to the invasive plant’s spread, Peter created a profitable business that eradicated knotweed, fed the community, and lined his own pockets.  He chose a couple of pockets of knotweed to experiment on and then settled in for a season of hard work, cutting down the old stalks and burning them in the winter, then harvesting young shoots that sprouted back from the roots for ten weeks in the spring and summer.  The harvested shoots were turned into his jams and relishes and sold at farmer’s markets and then through a store and restaurant, while less tasty shoots that popped up later in the summer were turned into resveratrol supplements.  Meanwhile, native plant seeds were sown in the knotweed patch so that they could become established during the year of constant knotweed harvest.  Two years later, the knotweed in each patch had been eradicated at a profit of 140 euros (approximately $186) per square meter.  True German ingenuity!  A similar system could be implemented in our region to deal with our own knotweed infestation if anyone had the time and inclination to give it a shot.

Down past the tangle of invasives at the east end of the Marlene Path, the careful observer will discover a rare but tasty herb spread across the forest floor.  Burdick’s Wild Leek is a relative of the well known Ramps --- very similar in taste and growth form, just a bit smaller. 

Like Ramps, the little white bulbs of Burdick’s Wild Leek have served Appalachian folk for centuries as the first fresh food to appear in the spring.  In our age of February tomatoes and year-round peaches, we quickly forget that early settlers in our region made do with cornmeal and salt pork for much of the winter.  By March, they were desperate for anything fresh and green to ward off scurvy and give their tastebuds a break.  Ramp festivals in places like Richwood, West Virginia, and Whitetop Mountain here in southwest Virginia are remnants of the ramp dinners Appalachian folks held to celebrate the return of fresh food into their diets.  Festival participants report that ramps taste like garlic but smell even stronger, so that the scent of ramps tends to linger for days after these festivals end.

Like Ginseng, Ramps are on their way toward being loved to death.  The small patches hidden on Sugar Hill are probably remnants of much bigger populations, and we request that visitors leave the Burdick’s Wild Leek patches alone to grow back into their former glory.

We all go through phases as teenagers --- our hip-hop phase, our rebellious phase.  I went through phases too, and the one I remember the most is my edible plants phase.

About a year before I hunted down the tract of old growth forest, my obsession was wild edibles.  For weeks, I pored over Euell Gibbons’ Stalking the Wild Asparagus.  I dug up daylily roots out of my flowerbed and boiled them, finding their taste bitter and not very palatable.  I agonized over whether it was ethical to dig up the slow-growing but supposedly delicious roots of the toothworts, finally deciding against it.  I read about pounding and boiling acorns until the bitterness is gone, then using them as flour.

Like most teenage phases, this one slowly faded away as I realized that I was too picky to eat two thirds of the cultivated foods that crossed my plate, let alone the wild ones.  But there are a few wild plants that I will still happily nibble on as I walk down the trail.  Teaberry and sassafras leaves are old friends, the first minty, the second spicy and slippery.  The Cliff Trail is home to two of my other favorite nibbles --- greenbriers and Spicebush.

There are actually two species of greenbriers to be found along the Cliff Trail (along with several more in southwest Virginia), and all of them form long, thorn-covered vines.  The more common of the two Sugar Hill species, aptly named Common Greenbrier, is my favorite for spring nibbling --- I like to pluck off the tender shoots that twine out of the end of the vine in spring and eat them raw for their slightly sour flavor.  I have been told that others cook the shoots like asparagus, but my greenbrier tendrils never make it home.  The other Sugar Hill greenbrier --- Hispid Greenbrier --- is easily distinguished by the smaller, hair-like thorns that line its stem.  Tender tendrils from the Hispid Greenbrier are also edible in the spring, though I rarely find enough to feel good about nibbling on them.

Friends who I introduce to greenbrier tendrils give me mixed reviews, but just about everyone likes Spicebush flower buds.  The Spicebush is closely related to the similarly spicy Sassafras, but its leaves are usually too strong for my palate.  In early spring, though, tiny round buds on the bush’s twigs swell until they pop open into pale yellow flowers.  The flowers, and especially the about-to-open flower buds, are just right --- slightly spicy, slightly sweet, without the kick of the adult leaves.  Like Common Greenbrier, Spicebushes are a dime a dozen in our region, so I feel no ethical quandary about snacking on their tasty buds as I hike Sugar Hill’s trails.

As with any teenage phase, the search for wild edibles does not come without dangers.  Before eating any wild plant, you should be positive that you are identifying it correctly and can distinguish it from poisonous plants.  Even easily identified edibles like greenbriers and Spicebush may cause allergic reactions in some people, so start off your experiments with small quantities.  Those caveats aside, it is certainly fun to know what to snack on when you run out of granola bars on the trail.

Four decades after Pierre-Francois Tubeuf’s demise near its peak, Sugar Hill received its modern name.  The property had passed on to Old Hattler Bickley whose dreams were less far-fetched than Tubeuf’s had been --- Bickley just wanted to make a living off the land on and around Sugar Hill.  Old Hattler Bickley ran cattle and grew grain, but he soon discovered that Sugar Hill was also full of Sugar Maple trees that could be tapped in early spring to make maple syrup and maple sugar.

Bickley’s maple sugar operation was relatively unique in the area, but cooking down maple sap into sugar had been part of the native culture for hundreds of years.  According to Native American legend, the sweetness of maple sap was discovered by accident when Chief Woksis came home and threw his tomahawk into the side of a Sugar Maple tree outside his home.  The next morning, he pulled the tool loose and went hunting, not realizing that sap was leaking out of the gash and into a bowl at the base of the tree.  Later that day, his daughter noticed the bowl of liquid while cooking supper and poured the maple sap into their meat stew rather than walking all the way to the creek for water.  As the stew cooked, the maple sap was rendered down into syrup, giving Woksis and his daughter a tasty treat.

However the first maple sugar was discovered, the sweetener quickly became a prominent part of the culture of many eastern Native American tribes.  The sap of Sugar Maples is rich in sugars in the early spring, and during this season many Native Americans would relocate to spend an entire month tapping maples and boiling down the sap into sugar.  The maple sugar was used for seasoning for the rest of the year and was also traded to other tribes who lived outside the small area in which maple sugar could be produced --- the climate required for maple syrup and sugar production is found only in part of New England and in certain pockets further south along the Appalachian Mountains. 

European settlers learned to tap maples from the Native Americans, though relatively few tried the endeavor this far south.  Old Hattler Bickley’s operation is considered to be the first maple sugaring operation in the area, taking advantage of the cold, north-facing slope that allows Sugar Maples to grow in our more southern climate.  Bickley tapped trees on the hillside below the Frenchman’s settlement, then boiled down the sap to be sold at the Bickley Mills trading center in Castlewood.  If you keep your eyes peeled, you may see patches of charcoal in the soil where fires were kept burning all day to reduce the sap by 4,000%, turning maple sap into syrup and then into sugar.

I have tried to tap the Sugar Maples on my own land about ten miles away with limited success, and have heard others in our area complain that southwest Virginia’s mountains no longer get cold enough to produce the sugar-filled sap that boils down into maple syrup.  As global warming makes maple syrup and sugar production in southwest Virginia a matter for the history books, it is worth remembering Sugar Hill’s history as a sign of a colder time.

After Black and Blue Cohosh, Twinleaf is the most prominent plant on the forest floor along the Americorps Trail.  Although Twinleaf is considered rare across much of its range, the limestone underlying the Americorps Trail provides a microhabitat that promotes vast stands of this delicate herb.

Twinleaf’s primary medicinal use is to treat rheumatism, but I find the species’ white flowers an even more compelling reason to seek it out in early spring.  Consider paying a visit to the Americorps Trail on April 13 to honor Thomas Jefferson, for whom the plant was given its scientific name.

The intricately divided leaves and tall stature of Black and Blue Cohosh make them two of the most striking species on the mature cove hardwood forest floor.  Keep your eyes open as you walk the Americorps Trail and you will find these two types of plants growing side by side.

Every stage of their life cycle is eye-catching, from the purple leaves of the Blue Cohosh pushing up out of the soil in the early spring, to the tall white spires of Black Cohosh flowers in June, and finally to the grape-like fruits that appear on Blue Cohosh in the summer.  Both plants are reputed to have similar healing properties with Black Cohosh roots being used to treat gynecological problems and induce abortions while Blue Cohosh roots have been used to ease menstrual pain and induce labor.

Goldenseal’s wrinkly leaves and white flowers are distinctive, but the yellow roots are the primary source of this plant’s medicinal powers.  The species has been used as an antibiotic and to treat ailments ranging from inflammation and diarrhea to cancer. 

As a child growing up one county south of Sugar Hill, I remember my father giving me dried Goldenseal roots to chew on when I woke with a cough --- a bitter-tasting remedy that my mother worried was too strong for a child.  Whether because of the medicinal properties of the herb or the awful taste, I never seemed to need a dose of Goldenseal for two nights in a row.

Until railroads breached the mountains in the late nineteenth century, bartering and subsistence farming were a way of life in Appalachia.  Only small trade goods of high value were worth transporting into the outside world to sell for cash money --- items like moonshine and dried ginseng (aka “seng”) roots.

Gathering medicinal herbs has continued to be an Appalachian source of revenue through the present day with dried ginseng roots now selling for as much as $600 per pound.  Most ginseng roots are eventually exported to China where they are considered a panacea, serving as an aphrodisiac, cure for diabetes and sexual dysfunction, and generally ensuring a long life.  Although ginseng is now hard to find in these hills due to overcollecting, the Americorps Trail is a good spot to observe several other medicinal plant species including Black and Blue Cohosh, Goldenseal, and Twinleaf.

With the possible exception of Twinleaf, all of these species were much prized by the Native Americans, who used them to cure illnesses ranging from menstrual cramps to cancer.  The English name “cohosh”, in fact, is derived from an Algonquin Indian word referring to the gnarly roots, suggesting that both Black and Blue Cohosh roots were used medicinally long before European settlement of the Americas.

Once Europeans entered the Appalachian region, use of medicinal herbs kicked into high gear.  By the early nineteenth century, Goldenseal was prized as a healing herb in both Europe and America.  A century later, 100 to 200 tons of goldenseal were being dug every year, with about a tenth of that being exported to Europe.

Overharvesting combined with habitat loss have since depleted the populations of most of our medicinal plant species and many are now listed as rare or endangered.  Goldenseal and ginseng are currently cultivated to supplement the dwindling native plants found in our rich woodlands.  To preserve these unique plants for our children and grandchildren, please refrain from collecting plants within Sugar Hill.

Summer Grape is probably the most common liana in southwest Virginia and is also a character in several interesting stories.  For example, my father always told me that if I got lost in the woods, I could cut the stem of a grapevine and drink the lightly sweetened water that gushes down from the plant’s upper reaches.  Although I was tempted, I never tried to drink from a grapevine because I knew that I would be killing a plant that took years to reach its current height.  But I did spend a lot of time looking up at the leafy peak, wondering why grapevines grow so tall.

Later, I came to understand trees as the plant version of our Cold War arms race.  Every plant needs sunlight, and trees figured out that if they grew a bit taller than their neighbors they could unfold their canopy in full sun and suck up all of the energy raining down from above.  The neighbors did not want to be outdone, so they grew just a little taller themselves.  Back and forth, the height contest spun out of control, until it finally had to end when trees were no longer able to push water from their roots any higher into the sky.  Each tree had thrust its leaves dozens of feet into the air, only to end up neck and neck with its neighbors after all.

I like to think of grapes as free loaders in this forest Cold War.  The lianas do not bother to build deep roots and strong trunks which would be necessary to hold up a tree-sized canopy.  Instead, they simply use tendrils to latch onto shrubs and trees as they climb toward the light.  In a fraction of the time (and for a fraction of the energy) that it takes for a tree to reach canopy height, a grapevine can wiggle its way up through the trees to achieve full sun.  It is easy to see that grapes are the true winners in the forest arms race.

Scientific Name: Laportea canadensis
Family: Urticaceae (Nettle Family)
Habitat: Rich woods
Blooms: July to August

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for coves --- the abrupt stream valleys you find in these parts where the sun barely reaches the bottom on winter days.  Salamanders and rare plants share my fondness, and I have spent many long hours poking around in deep, damp hollers in search of both. 

Unfortunately, nettles love coves too.  Some nettles are harmless --- the translucent stems and short stature of Clearweed are a common sight in cool, shady woods.  But the two stinging species quickly block their less caustic relatives from your mind.

Wood Nettles can be found in just about any cove in our region.  Their coarsely toothed leaves and inconspicuous flowers mark them as nettles.  Meanwhile, the leaves alternating up their stems distinguish them from our other stinging species --- the aptly named Stinging Nettle.

When I first heard that the Stinging Nettle was introduced from Europe, I was intrigued.  Why would anyone carry a plant across the Atlantic Ocean that sets your skin tingling with pain?  Dipping into several books on wild edible and medicinal plants, I quickly discovered that Stinging Nettles make a delicious cooked green and can be used to cure arthritis.  Some sources suggest that Wood Nettles can be used in a similar manner.  Be sure to cook well, though, to deactivate the sting!