fungus · The Trophy Room
Golden Chanterelle
The king of the Pacific Northwest forest floor and the one everyone learns first. The Pacific golden chanterelle is our regional species — a little more salmon-orange and scaly-capped than its European cousin — and a good mossy slope under Douglas fir or hemlock will produce for years if you treat it right.
Identifying
- egg-yolk to salmon gold, vase or trumpet shaped, often with wavy in-rolled edges
- FALSE gills — blunt, forked ridges that run down onto the stem, never thin blade gills
- smells faintly of apricot when fresh
- flesh is white and stringy inside, tears like string cheese
- lookalike warning: the jack-o'-lantern (Omphalotus) has TRUE knife-edge gills, grows in clusters on wood, and is toxic — chanterelles grow from soil, one at a time
Facts
- mycorrhizal — it lives in partnership with living tree roots, which is why no one has ever managed to farm one
- a productive patch fruits in the same spot for decades; cut or pinch rather than pull to protect it
- the unofficial mushroom of the whole PNW table — dense, meaty, and worth the hunt
