Matsutake Glut On the Alaska Highway

Matsutake or Pines are selling for only $2.00 per pound.   Here is a pile of Pines that a buyer discarded as junk because they were not perfect buttons.

In Japanese Matsi=Pine Take=Mushroom

Giant Lepotia??

What the heck is this thing? We are almost sure it is a parasol mushroom (Macrolepiota procera) but we seem to be getting a gray spore print and my book says they are only known to Arizona and the South West. We are not going to eat it even though it smells good. It stains reddish at first and then brown.

Click on the images to enlarge them

We asked an expert at the college and he answered:
"Chlorophyllum (Lepiota) rachodes complex, probably Chlorophyllum (Lepiota)
brunneum"

These are considered to be quite tasty but they do upset some people's stomachs. These were too old to bother with so we still won't eat them.

Searching on Chlorophyllum brunneum" yielded this information Yeesh, no wonder we were confused. In fact this reminds me of a song:

Used to be called Hypholoma
but they couldn’t leave it alone-a
they changed the name to Naematoloma,
Then back to Hypho-lo-ma
Nuf to make a mycologist groan-a

That and many more are on the CD "Fungal Boogie"

OH! OH oh! I see they have new CD out. Kewl new music to drive to the shroom hunting spots by.













We spent the day doing back to school stuff. Bought back to school shoes for both of us. Yep I'm going back to school this fall. I'm finally going to get the BA degree that I went for in 1989. Ninety seven of my credits transferred so I'm off to a good running start.

We wandered around campus some today. My GPS said we walked over six miles but I'm not sure I believe it. We walked down to the beach and back in search of mushrooms. I've never had much luck hunting for mushrooms in the woods there.

I'm not sure how much going to college is going to impact my hiking but I hope to be able to stay with my hiking.   If I get the class that I want in winter quarter I will go hiking and backpacking as part of my studies.

Tricholoma subumbrinum -our best guess

We have keyed this out to Tricholoma subumbrinum useing the key at Mycoweb We are sure it is a tricholoma but not sure if it's a subumbrinum. I'm glad I can type this latin name out because I sure can't pronounce it.

Matsutake is a Tricholoma so this is related.

Ok we got an answer from an expert who says it is probably Tricholoma focale. Very interesting because when I first spotted this my daughter and I agreed that it was a "Zellers Tricholoma" AND the old scientific name for Tricholoma focale is Armillaria zelleri. So we were right last year and this year when we guessed at it based on pictures but when we tried to key it out this year we were wrong.

I keep an eye out for Zellers Trihcoloma and am happy when I find it (even though it is poison) because it can mean that there is Matsutake around.





I have Matsutake breath. I grilled some and made soup out of the others. The bits that were wormy are in my daughter's maggot farm. While we were enjoying our Matsutake feast the skies opened up.

The rain came down as hard as I have ever seen and lightening bolts struck just under two miles away. What a powerful storm that was and totally unexpected. I'm looking at the local weather radar and it looks like another storm that is just as intense is coming our way. This is great news, it was starting to get a bit dry and we needed some rain for mushrooms. I hope this is all the rain we see this week. Too much rain would sog out all the mushrooms. This might just be perfect, one good hard rain followed by a week of no rain.

We are going to check out our King Bolete spots tomorrow but we might be jumping the gun a bit.

Ten Matsutaki in one day

Yesterday I nabbed my 500th Geocache and today I found ten Matsutake. I spotted seven of them and my oldest spotted three of them. We have learned how and better yet where to find these.  It only took us three years.  Where did I find these? Out in the woods of course.

Click on image to see them in detail.. I wish I could upload the scent of these beauties.

Geocache #500

This is near the Vance Creek Bridge