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Season: Late Fall to Early Winter

READ THIS Before Gathering and Eating Wild Mushrooms.

Urban, Rural or Both: Both, Mainly Rural

Enokitake (Flammulina velutipes). Known also as the Enoki, Golden Needle mushroom, Enokidake, Velvet Foot and Velvet Stem. One of the latest in the season to fruit. It can even fruit in the winter in a warm spell. If it is summer, and you find what you think are these, don't bother, it is probably something else - they like cold.

Almost all mushrooms should be cooked, but if you want to have raw, delicious mushrooms, for instance on a salad, a great choice is the Enokitake. These are fantastic raw - if fresh of course. They can be found in Asian food stores, and a lot of regular grocery stores, but I find the price is much lower in the Asian food stores. Since they are often available in stores, that is a safe way to get to know them. I don't even bother looking for them in the wild any more. If I find them in the wild, great. By the way, in a store, they should be pure white. When they have been on the shelves for too long, they start to get a yellowish, or tan like hue. Don't bother with those - bright white only from a store. Also, look at the picture I've included for these below. That is how they should look fresh. If the caps are much more open than this, and pushing against the plastic wrap covering them - they have been sitting around too long.

The reason the cultivated ones are pure white, is they are grown in the dark. In nature, where there is light, they are a goldish-pink. If you gather them in the wild, be careful, and make sure you get it right, as the smaller the mushroom, the harder it is to identify in general. By the way, the cultivated ones have long stems and small caps, but in the wild the stems are shorter and the caps wider. They are exposed to carbon dioxide gas when cultivated, which creates the long stem and small cap. It is remarkable how different the cultivated and wild ones look, even though they are the same species.

In the wild, found growing on tree stumps in great numbers in bunches. Pink/golden, reddish-brown, tawny, yellow-orange in color. This mushroom is always growing from wood, never the ground (unless there is a buried log - but don't collect these anyway), and always in tightly packed bunches. Sometimes, these can be fairly high up on a dead tree - just out of reach.

It is very important to take a spore print when you think you have found a Enokitake (Flammulina velutipes) to make 100% sure you don't have a Galerina marginata. Go to my entry on the Galerina marginata on the Poisonous Plants page as well as the previous link to make sure you know the differences very well. This is a warmer season mushroom unlike the Enokitake, but still be sure.

The Galerina marginata has a BROWN spore print, whereas the Enokitake (Flammulina velutipes) has a WHITE spore print.

If you find a solitary mushroom on the ground with a white spore print - Do Not Eat.

They go very well in stir-fry's as well, and I like to use them in soups. I usually use the caps raw for salads, and chop up the stems and add those to any soup I have going.

Description:

• Cap Morphology: Convex to flat to umbonate. Range of colors when found in wild: pink/golden, reddish-brown, tawny, yellow-orange. The color is darkest in the center of the cap and lighter near the edge. Pure white if cultivated. Cap margin is generally folded down. If the cap is wet, it has a slimy texture. The flesh on the cap is very thin. Cap is generally 1-5 cm (2/5 to 2 inches) diameter if found in wild, under 1 cm if cultivated.
• Spore Bearing Surface: Gills on lower side of cap. Pale yellow in wild specimens, pure white when cultivated
• Gill Attachment (how the Spore Bearing Surface is attached to the Stipe or Stem): Adnexed
• Spore print: White
• Stipe (Stalk): Bare - no annulus or ring on stalk. Wild specimens have a very light golden-yellow to orange-brown stalk when young, but when mature dark reddish-brown to brown-black color with velvety hairs starting from base and working up as it gets older. On cultivated specimens the stalk is pure white. Generally 2.5-10 cm (1 to 4 inches) long.
• Partial Veil: Does not have one
• Season: Late Fall
• Habitat: On hardwood, especially Elms in my experience. Sometimes on fallen logs, but often on standing wood.
• Notes: This mushroom fruits in clusters that come from one spot on the wood - this is a good starting point for identification. One of the few mushrooms that can survive freezing temperatures and continue growing when weather goes above freezing. In Southwestern Ontario I have only found them on Elm trees in late November to early December in low lying areas, though that may not be typical.
• Recipe search on the web here (Google search) and here (Bing search).
• Pictures on the web here (Google images) and here (Bing images). Be cautious when looking at the web pictures of this one, I've noticed a lot are mislabeled.

Below are pictures of the Very Poisonous Galerina marginata (Galerina marginata)

Please fully read about the Galerina marginata Mushroom here.

Before Gathering and Eating any Wild Mushroom READ THE FOLLOWING:

This is a difficult subject to approach. I've been studying mushrooms in the wild for about 30 years and they often still surprise and confuse me when identifying.

The problem for a site like this, is that 100% correct identification is absolutely necessary, but hard to do for many mushrooms - even with years of experience, let alone a newcomer to the subject. Best to have someone with genuine expertise show you. If that is not possible, please do much research on the web or with books, preferably both. Do not trust a single source of information - EVER. I have found mistakes on the web, and have even corrected errors on Wikipedia myself. You need confirmation from multiple sources. If you are serious about the subject, one book I highly recommend is "Mushrooms Demystified: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fleshy Fungi by David Arora". I bought the 1986 edition in 1987 and that is what got me started seriously learning about mushrooms. David Arora is from the west coast, but what he says about east coast mushrooms matches with my experience. There are pictures, and very well thought out step by step identification sequences.

Another book which is very good, and a great guide to carry with you on gathering expeditions is "The Audubon Society Field Guild to North American Mushrooms".

Before you gather anything, you must know the most dangerous mushroom of Eastern North America - it can mean your life if you don't. It is the Destroying Angel (Amanita bisporigera). There is another Destroying Angel on the west coast, the Amanita ocreata. Please take me seriously with this, the Destroying Angels not only kill, but they kill you slowly & painfully. Don't rely on taste, people who have eaten them said, before they died, they were very good tasting. I don't think there is anything, other than maybe the Water Hemlock plant, that kills with such pain and suffering. Look them up, read about them here - KNOW THEM.

Another very dangerous mushroom with the same toxin as the Destroying Angel is the Galerina marginata. Please read the entry for Galerina marginata on the Poisonous Plants page.

I suggest only five mushrooms for the wild food gatherer & mushroom novice to start off with. The Chanterelle, Morel, Hericium, and the Sulphur Shelf and Giant Puffball. The Morel, and Giant Puffball can often be found in urban environments. The Chanterelle, Hericium, Morel and Sulphur Shelf in the woods. The Giant Puffball can be often found in grassy areas in the country. I have seen the Sulphur Shelf in the city on rare occasions on the side of dying trees. These five are relatively straight forward to identify correctly, and do not have deadly poisonous close look-alikes - although there may be similar looking mushrooms that could make you sick - very sick, so always take identification very seriously. Also, these are not mushrooms you can usually buy in the local grocery store. Until fairly recently, Morels could not be grown in artificial environments.

The Morel is a spring season mushroom, Chanterelle, Sulphur Shelf and Giant Puffball is a summer to fall mushroom, and the Hericium is a late summer to fall mushroom, so this gives a fairly large window of time to enjoy them. PLEASE take it very slowly, do a lot of research, look at many pictures, and learn how to identify the edible ones from mushrooms that look like them - STEP by STEP with each aspect of the mushroom. Remember, though I do my best to help you identify them, this is not a dedicated identification guide, you do need to learn more than I provide.

And by the way, be careful of what other people pick. Some people go by simple rules of identification that they have learned from others that don't hold up. They may have been lucky so far, but if you eat what others have picked, you had better hope they know what they are doing. Know what you are picking, don't use simple rules except for one: If you are not absolutely, 100% sure, with each and every aspect of the mushroom, do not eat it.

Spore Prints:

Learn to take a spore print. Put a mushroom cap on white and black paper, and cover with a cup or bowl and after a couple of hours take off the cup, carefully lift up the cap and you should see a spore print. The color of the spores is an important aspect of identification. Go to the spore print link, where you will see the black and white spore print paper image. Click on it, click again and print it. Here is a link directly to it. You can print the same image below:

The next six images are the steps in taking a spore print:

Remember the mushroomer's motto: When in Doubt - Throw it Out. Even experts aren't sure sometimes, and will pass on eating a mushroom unless they are sure.

One more thing I will repeat over and over. When eating anything for the first time, only have a tiny amount to make sure you are not allergic to it. This is especially true for mushrooms. Every edible mushroom creates a reaction with some people. There are two choice edible mushrooms that I am allergic too. The Oyster mushroom makes me feel like I have the flu coming on, and the Boletus edulis makes me feel hot, I break into a sweat, and feel sick to my stomach.

If you think I'm being overly cautious, think about what I read years ago (I regrettably forget the source). There are two kinds of wild mushroom eaters: Brave ones and living ones.

Identification: When reading the description for the mushrooms, refer to the chart below for what those descriptions mean.

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