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Your Curated Foraging Experience

November 3, 2024 | Saratoga County

Nature can surprise us

No matter the time of year, the forest reveals abundant gifts to those who seek them, and this was proven over and over during our curated morning. We were thrilled to explore this Saratoga County forest alongside you, and we could not have asked for a more exciting Experience in the late fall!

What did we find?

We're so grateful to have shared in this very special Experience with you. As you know, so many factors come into a successful hunt, and the weeks leading to our Experience felt like all those factors were the opposite-of-ideal. But! With a few days of drizzle and a few cold snaps (and some other triangulation), the forest was ready to strut its stuff just for us! Here's a look at just a few of the many, many things we found:

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Sarcomyxa serotina

Late Fall Oyster

  • Usually grows in shelving clusters, sometimes individually
  • Caps are semicircular or shell-shaped; flat or shallowly depressed; sticky when fresh; at first orangish yellow to orange, becoming olive to dark green, sometimes mottled with yellow shades; fading to yellowish or greenish, or sometimes darkening to medium brown
  • Gills radiate from the point of attachment or running down the stem (adnate); close or crowded; often forking; orangish to yellowish buff, developing brownish edges
  • Absent or stubby stem
  • Flesh whitish, tough, rubbery, and unchanging when sliced
  • White spore print
  • Smells of anise, strongly earthy
  • Saprotrophic: Late fall oysters grow on decaying deadwood of hardwoods and occasionally on the deadwood of hemlocks, causing a white rot
  • Fruits in late fall and winter
  • Mild flavor, and can be prepared as a substitute in recipes for squid or octopus. Here's our favorite resource for recipes!
Inonotus obliquus

Chaga

  • Sterile conk is a parasite that grows predominantly on birch trees
  • Irregularly formed, resembles charcoal
  • Causes a white heart rot to develop in the host tree
  • Spores enter the tree through wounds, particularly poorly healed branch stubs
  • Chaga contains extremely high concentrations of oxalate, 2800–11200 mg total oxalates/100 g sclerotium, one of the highest reported in any organism
  • Potawatomi people use the fungus, called shkitagen in their language, as a firekeeping tinder. Read: Braiding Sweetgrass
  • A little goes a long way! Turn your chaga into tea!
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Ganoderma spp.

Artist's Conch

  • A cousin of Reishi! See how they are both part of the Ganoderma family? I just wouldn't eat an Artist's Conch!
  • Grows right on the wood in shelves and brackets
  • Has a matte cap
  • Pored fertile surface area
  • Great fun to etch into the pored surface of fresher Conchs. The lines quickly darken. Let your Conch dry out, then use as ornamentation in your home or garden!
Trametes versicolor

Turkey Tail

  • Common polypore meaning "of several colors"
  • Surface of cap has concentric rings with a white margin
  • Surface of cap is velvety and smooth
  • Pore surface is whitish to light brown, with small round pores
  • Grows in a rosette pattern and tiled in layers in groups or rows on logs and stumps of deciduous trees, resembling the tails of turkey
  • Polysaccharide-K (PSK or krestin), extracted from T. versicolor, is considered safe for use as a therapy for cancer treatment in Japan where it is approved for clinical use
  • Another wonderful medicinal, turkey tail tea is easy to make
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Tremella mesenterica

Witch's Butter

  • Considered a jelly fungus, Witch's Butter has gelatinous, orange-yellow fruit body
  • Frequently found on both dead but attached and recently fallen branches and rotting logs, especially after rain
  • Occurs widely in deciduous and mixed forests
  • Smooth fertile surface area and no cap
  • Lacks a stipe
  • Spore print is white-to-yellow
  • It's like nature's Jell-O!
Ganoderma tsugae

Reishi

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afa74adc-bfe9-4445-99e8-557aef7318fa julie montalbano
Megacollybia rodmanii

Broadgills

  • Saprobic; solitary to several on and near deciduous logs, stumps, wood debris or on ground from buried wood
  • Fungus with one of the longer seasons, from May through October, so when we see rodmaniis, we know it's time to forage!
  • Gills Attached; white; broad; edges uneven to ragged, appearing eroded
  • White spore print
  • White, smooth, often with white rhizomorphs
    present at the base
  • We don't recommend consuming rodmanii

This of course isn't an exhaustive list—we also found Waxy Caps, false oysters, Violet-Toothed Polypores, false turkey, Teal Elf Cups, decayed Lactarius, and so much more!

Notes on consumption and more

As they say, all mushrooms are edible once.

Use caution when consuming wild foods. No mushroom will harm you by touching it, smelling it, or even licking it. It is the actual swallowing and consumption we want to be aware of.

That being said, 99% of edible wild mushrooms should be thoroughly cooked before consuming to avoid gastrointestinal distress. If you're unsure how an edible mushroom will affect you, try a small amount and wait several hours before trying more, to see how your body reacts.

Fresh mushrooms should be stored in a cool, dry place, around 38°-42°F. Field cleaning your mushrooms is the best way to keep them tidy and limit your prep work later. Do not rinse mushrooms in water until you're ready to use them; this helps prevent rot and lengthen their freshness.

Should you choose to dehydrate your mushrooms, please note that your finished product is still considered raw, and should be cooked before consuming.

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Saratoga Wild Roots are Danielle Kuehnel and Eve Bucwinski

Both women are Wild Mushroom Food Safety-certified professionals based out of Saratoga County, New York. For us, foraging is a passion and a way of life, and one we love to share with others. Together, we wander forests, experiment with kitchen chemistry, host hyperlocal and seasonal supper clubs, and teach our young children everything we know about all of the above. We offer public and private forays, workshops, and other educational opportunities, in addition to a variety of wild-foraged food products. Come drink the wild air with us!
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Danielle Kuehnel
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Eve Bucwinski