Mark Blazis: Mushroom hunting a delicious endeavor – Worcester Telegram

Mark Blazis

Local mushroom hunting guide Matt Ashmankus and I had collected a big basket full of edible mushrooms from his secret spot in Millbury. We found many colorful,but poisonous amanitas and left them alone. Another time, maybe wed satisfy our curiosity and identify each deadly species just for fun. But this day, we were just thinking about safe and delicious mushrooms for dinner.

Its hard to misidentify either boletes, which have porous undercaps, or russulas, which have gilled undercaps. Ashmankus advises that, Boletes are good for beginners to pick. Its hard to find a poisonous one around here, although there is one very uncommon one with a red stem that shouts out, Leave me alone!

Novice mushroom hunters wishing to avoid nasty,gastro-intestinal symptom-causing-boletes would do well to not pick any fungus with orange or red pores, or that bruise blue.

As you can get deathly sick from eating bad mushrooms, we cautiously examined every specimen we had collected, confirming their identifications in our field guide. Violet gray bolete (Tylopilus plumbeo violaceous); two-colored bolete (Boletus bicolor); lilac-brown bolete (Tylopilus eximius); red-cracked bolete (Boletus chrysenteron); ornate-stalked bolete, and Boletus ornatipes would all be carefully scrutinized before sauteing.

Having checked off our field guides and annotated the date and location of our bolete harvest, we then went to the gilled russulas still in our basket: tacky green russula (Russula aeruginea) and fragile russula (Russula fragiles). It then started pouring, so we rushed to place our baskets in my Denali to keep them dry. Wet mushrooms rot quickly. After all our effort to harvest them, they were too valuable to waste.

As a fellow Lithuanian, I understood Ashmankus passion for mushrooms. Gathering them has been part of our ethnic tradition. I saw that surprising phenomenon when I went to Lithuania the very first year they had won their freedom from the Soviet Union.

Dr. Vytautus Logminas, the author of the only field guide to the birds of Lithuania had invited me to study Lithuanian birds and birdbanding research techniques with him there. I never expected hed take me mushrooming with his family and scientific colleagues on our days off.

On weekends, we ventured all over the countryside, like just about everyone else from the great university city of Vilnius. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, truck drivers just about every professional and level of society in the country seemed to be nature starved and have within them a joy for picking mushrooms along with the blueberries that were concurrently ripening, too. I was able to quickly pick a basket of boletes and chanterelles with them, earning their respect.

Unsurprisingly, Ashmankus local mushrooming hunting classes have attracted a good number of eastern Europeans, including Poles, other Lithuanians, and Russians. But some Italians have joined his group, too. Its good theyre learning from him. While edible mushrooms from other parts of the world can look very much like some of our species, the similarities can be deceptive and even dangerous especially now.

From August on, we have our greatest chances of lots of fungus-stimulating precipitation from southern storms, especially hurricane events. September is consequentlythe state'sworst month for mushroom poisonings.

Back in storm-ravaged 2011 arguably the best mushroom year in over two decades there were 63 reported mushroom poisonings in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire; and 45 in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The more rain, the more mushrooms and the more poisonings.

Some novices who were looking for delicious and safe boletus porcinis confused them with similar-looking poisonous lilac brown boletes. And some who thought they were picking edible chanterelles were actually eating toxin-filled jack-o-lantern fungi.

Eating misidentified mushrooms can lead to diarrhea, excruciating abdominal pain, vomiting, liver damage, and in extreme cases death.

Destroying Angels, (Amanita bisporigera or Amanita virosa); death cap (Amanita phalloides); cleft-footed amanita (Amanita brunnescens); yellow-orange fly agaric (Amanita muscaria); Amanita multisquamosa; deadly galerina (Galerina autumnalis); green-spored lepiota (Chlorphyllum molybdites); and false morel, sometimes called brain fungus (Gyromitra esculenta), are some ofthe area'smore poisonous species that could prove fatal.

The widespread and common death cap kills more people than any other. While it looks like a common store mushroom, smells, and even tastes delicious (its a myth that all poisonous mushrooms taste bad), its amatoxins immediately bind to and disable a vital enzyme necessary for protein formation in our cells, rapidly causing our liver to fail.

Symptoms dont appear for aboutsix hours or more after eating. Initial vomiting and diarrhea could mislead one to think that a stomach flu pathogen was the culprit. But soon after, coma is followed by death.

I remember my own Lithuanian mushroom-picking grandmother, who lived to be 100 after eating countless wild mushrooms both in Europe and Massachusetts, telling me a tragic mushroom story that took place back in the old country when she was a young girl. Her closest girl friend at age 15 was married off by her parents to a much older man who was, according to my grandmother, an abusive drunk. In strictest confidence, the young bride shared only with my grandmother that her husband beat her during his drunken rages to the point that she desperately resorted to killing him with a soup she had laced with poison mushrooms.

Of course, there were no forensic studies back then in that rural area. Partly in light of his old age, his death was attributed to natural causes. Only she, my grandmother, and 80 years later this writer ever knew the true story of his demise.

It has been accurately stated many times that there are no old, bold mushroom hunters. Every mushroom hunter, even the most experienced, must always be 100 percent certain of identifications. That means serious time studying and even taking spore prints. Allowing a harvested mushroom to drop its spores overnight on a white piece of paper can reveal its distinctive color and pattern, thereby providing conclusive identification.

Personally, I still pick only the dozen local species that I know perfectly: chanterelles, morels, king boletes, beefsteak mushrooms, honey mushrooms, chicken-of-the-woods, hen-of-the-woods, oyster mushrooms, the coral mushroom Clavaria cineria, slippery Jack, Suillus granulatus, and a safe edible, easily-identified mushroom that should be emerging right about now the black trumpet chanterelle. Look for that delicious beauty under beech trees, where its mossy, or where theres a slight depression where rain collects. Mushroom hunting authority, Russ Cohen suggests looking for them around vernal pools.

Yes, now is the best time of year to find and eat these wild delicacies, but until youre an expert, your fungal forays should all be under the supervision of a mycologist who can teach you how to fully and safely enjoy every one of them.

Contact Mark Blazis at markblazis@charter.net.

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Mark Blazis: Mushroom hunting a delicious endeavor - Worcester Telegram