Armed with wicker baskets and cloth shopping bags, members of the West Virginia Mushroom Club set out from a Kanawha State Forest picnic shelter and began foraging up a slope off Logtown Hollow Trail.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Armed with wicker baskets and cloth shopping bags, members of the West Virginia Mushroom Club set out from a Kanawha State Forest picnic shelter and began foraging up a slope off Logtown Hollow Trail.
The club, also known as the West Virginia Destroying Angels in a tongue-in-cheek salute to a deadly species of mushroom common to the state, had begun its summer foray - a collection and identification hike.
Within minutes, Nelle Chilton of Charleston was holding up a long-stemmed whitish mushroom, and proceeding to identify it.
"It's a milky," she said, as milk-like fluid oozed from a notch she had cut in its top. She dabbed a fingertip into the goo and tasted it.
"Very hot!" she exclaimed before spitting out the peppery juice, and placing the mushroom in her collection basket.
A few moments later, Cy Barton harvested the foray's first chanterelle - an edible, orange-topped, apricot-scented mushroom that is perhaps the state's most-sought summer fungi species.
Then the club's youngest members, Gavin Ward and Ned Barrett, trotted down the hillside carrying numerous chanterelles rolled up in their untucked T-shirt tails.
"People usually start getting into mushrooms because they want to eat them," said club member Nancy Ward, "but after a while, they branch out and want to identify and learn about other mushrooms, because they're so interesting."
Barton and his wife, Charleston restaurateur Luisa di Trapano, fall into that category. They joined the club to broaden their fungal horizons after learning to find, cook and savor morels, a popular variety of spring mushroom.
"It was a great season for morels this year," said di Trapano, who has incorporated the woodland mushroom into her pasta sauces.
Mushrooms come in all shapes, sizes, colors and aromas. Some are tasty while others are deadly, and many are neither harmful nor particularly good to eat.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Armed with wicker baskets and cloth shopping bags, members of the West Virginia Mushroom Club set out from a Kanawha State Forest picnic shelter and began foraging up a slope off Logtown Hollow Trail.
The club, also known as the West Virginia Destroying Angels in a tongue-in-cheek salute to a deadly species of mushroom common to the state, had begun its summer foray - a collection and identification hike.
Within minutes, Nelle Chilton of Charleston was holding up a long-stemmed whitish mushroom, and proceeding to identify it.
"It's a milky," she said, as milk-like fluid oozed from a notch she had cut in its top. She dabbed a fingertip into the goo and tasted it.
"Very hot!" she exclaimed before spitting out the peppery juice, and placing the mushroom in her collection basket.
A few moments later, Cy Barton harvested the foray's first chanterelle - an edible, orange-topped, apricot-scented mushroom that is perhaps the state's most-sought summer fungi species.
Then the club's youngest members, Gavin Ward and Ned Barrett, trotted down the hillside carrying numerous chanterelles rolled up in their untucked T-shirt tails.
"People usually start getting into mushrooms because they want to eat them," said club member Nancy Ward, "but after a while, they branch out and want to identify and learn about other mushrooms, because they're so interesting."
Barton and his wife, Charleston restaurateur Luisa di Trapano, fall into that category. They joined the club to broaden their fungal horizons after learning to find, cook and savor morels, a popular variety of spring mushroom.
"It was a great season for morels this year," said di Trapano, who has incorporated the woodland mushroom into her pasta sauces.
Mushrooms come in all shapes, sizes, colors and aromas. Some are tasty while others are deadly, and many are neither harmful nor particularly good to eat.
"You should never eat a wild mushroom unless it has been identified by someone knowledgeable," said Ward, since there are no hard-and-fast rules or tests to distinguish edible from poisonous mushrooms.
In addition to chanterelles, edible specimens collected during last Saturday's foray included the old man of the woods, with its stubble-studded cap, and the bradley, a "milk" producing mushroom with a brown-orange top and a strong odor of fish.
Less appetizing finds included the aptly named stinkhorn - a stick-like 'shroom with an aroma of decaying road kill - and the namesake of the club's nickname, the destroying angel, a delicate, white but highly toxic mushroom.
John Bullock earned the honor of collecting the day's most unique find, an indigo milky - a pale blue species that "bleeds" blue milk when scratched.
At the end of the hike, naturalist Robert Hunsucker of Marlinton, the foray leader, identified specimens collected by club members, using a small library of field guides he'd brought with him to sort through the more than 300 species found in West Virginia.
"Since I don't do this all the time, I have to relearn things every year," he said.
"West Virginia has an amazing diversity of mushroom species," said Ward. "There's more diversity here than just about anywhere."
As Hunsucker examined and labeled the last of the specimens, club members helped themselves to a buffet lunch that included chanterelle lasagna, a savory chanterelle bread pudding, and ice tea made from the medicinal mushroom hemlock varnish shelf.
The public is invited to join the West Virginia Mushroom Club on its forays for a $10 fee to help cover the costs of shelter rental, food and refreshments.
Memberships are available for $15. The club's next outing will take place Sept. 6 at Greenbrier State Forest near White Sulphur Springs starting at 10 a.m.
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelham...@wvgazette.com or 348-5169.
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