Morel Picking along Big Spruce Creek
Out of wildfire comes a delicacy, the famed morel. Notice, I called it a morel, not a morel mushroom. Morels are fungi, but not a mushroom, technically. Anywho, the short hike up Big Spruce Creek goes through a burn that left the charred earth ideal for the growth of morels. [map style=”width: auto; height:400px; margin:20px […]
Finding, Harvesting, and Eating the Oyster Mushroom
Every year at this time, oyster mushrooms appear from the stumps and fallen logs of cottonwoods along the Bitterroot River. This particular species (Pleurotus populinus) had inoculated a downed cottonwood. Ecology: Saprobic; growing in shelf-like clusters on dead and living wood of Populus species, primarily quaking aspen; causing a white rot; spring, summer, and fall; widely […]