fungus · The Trophy Room
Oyster Mushroom
Shelves of soft white fans stacked up the side of a dead alder or cottonwood — the oyster mushroom is one of the most reliable and forgiving wild edibles going. It fruits in cold weather when almost nothing else does, and there's no dangerous white-gilled shelf fungus that grows quite like it.
Identifying
- fan or oyster-shell shaped caps, white to tan to grey, in overlapping shelves on wood
- gills run down onto a very short, off-center stem (or no stem at all)
- soft, pliable flesh; a faint sweet anise-seafood smell
- always on wood — logs, stumps, standing dead trunks
Facts
- one of the few mushrooms that fruits through cold snaps, which makes it a winter staple
- a rare carnivore — its mycelium paralyzes and digests tiny nematodes for nitrogen
- the easiest gourmet mushroom to grow at home, but a wild flush off a big log beats any kit
