Orange/brown Mushrooms?

[rydesteel]

Dad's got these growing under and around a 25-30 year old White Pine, he's never had them before. He's in north western IL, if that makes a difference. Cool looking shrooms, he wanted to know what they were and I don't have a clue.

[j44ke]

One of the boletus mushrooms probably. Beyond that you have to know which of several fieldmarks or test results are conclusive of a specific species. Often the color is not definitive as colors vary even within the same species. But pores versus gills on the underside of the cap and the shape usually means a bolete of some sort. There are a lot of them.

Safety rule of mushrooms is never eat anything you can't identify with 100% certainty. Or as Yoda says, there is no try.

[rydesteel]

Thanks Jorn, we have no intention of eating them. More of a curiosity, this is the first time they'd shown up in the yard and Dad wanted to know what they were.

[Tom]

My Dad liked to go down to the bottom of the pasture next to the woods and pick the boletus type mushrooms for breakfast. He grew up in Poland and the year he spent running from the Russians he ate a lot of mushrooms he foraged but he still liked to eat them many years later in Vermont. So one morning when I was in my twenties I'm visiting one weekend and we made breakfast. Fresh eggs, some bacon, toast, coffee and some of the mushrooms. Naturally, he being who he was, he gave me the larger portion. We sat down, he is sipping coffee and buttering his toast when I taste the mushrooms. They're awful. Bitter and tasted just off. Knowing my Dad knows what he's doing with mushrooms I figured they were an acquired taste and so as not to offend him I thought I'd just eat them fast and get it over with. He beamed as I dug in.

He finished buttering his toast, picked up his fork and took some mushrooms. He stopped chewing. "Something's wrong."

"I'm gonna die" was my first thought.

They were just too old, past their prime. But for a second there I thought I was a goner.

One thing he didn't know about was chanterelles. One summer my brother's in laws from Switzerland visited and they came back from a walk and asked who claimed the giant patch of chanterelles they came across. None of us locals had a clue, we told them nobody and they about leaped out of their chairs. They came back with hatfuls of them. Those were delicious.

[j44ke]

Thanks Jorn, we have no intention of eating them. More of a curiosity, this is the first time they'd shown up in the yard and Dad wanted to know what they were.

I figured as much, but I just say it automatically because the risk factor is pretty high with mushrooms.

There are a couple decent guides that are carry-sized for hikes etc. Or just keep in the kitchen. National Audubon Society's Guide Series has one. And Peterson Field Guide Series has one. Neither is entirely definitive, but I don't think any mushroom guides are just because the subject is so variable and differences between species come down to experienced judgment.

I restrict myself to harvesting only the absolutely obvious species. Bolete family is huge. The best tasting mushrooms of all, the Italian Porcini mushrooms, are in that family. There are also some pretty horrible tasting Boletes. I tend to only pick boletes when I am hunting with friends who are 70 year old mushroom hunters - lots of foraged mushrooms eaten and still alive, so I figure they qualify as authoritative sources.

We have morels and oyster mushrooms on our property. Those are easy to i.d. This year, however, they have all rotted in the ground due to the heavy rainfall. So not the best year here for mushrooms.

Favorite are black trumpet mushrooms. And now is the time to find maitake mushrooms - hen of the woods (different mushroom from chicken of the woods) - which often grows around oak trees or apple trees. But it is still raining.

[COVRTDESIGN]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boletus_auripes

We had these all over Vermont.

[BBB]

Mushrooms have been in the news of late.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/v...10-p5dvin.html

[Mabouya]

This is interesting. Still not sure I'd eat one I didn't recognize:

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/usd...poisonous-test

https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events...ous-mushrooms/

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the current method of testing for amatoxins are time-consuming and rely on expensive, specialized equipment. But—and this is a big but—that might soon be known as the "previous method," as ARS scientists have developed a portable test strip that can quickly and accurately detect amatoxins in a "rice grain-sized" piece of a mushroom, or they can be used to test the urine of a human or dog that may have consumed a poisonous mushroom.

Perhaps most importantly, the new test can provide either a positive or a negative result within 10 minutes.

[Mark Kelly]

Safety rule of mushrooms is never eat anything you can't identify with 100% certainty. Or as Yoda says, there is no try.

This.

My Dad liked to go down to the bottom of the pasture next to the woods and pick the boletus type mushrooms for breakfast. He grew up in Poland and the year he spent running from the Russians he ate a lot of mushrooms he foraged but he still liked to eat them many years later in Vermont.

First winery I ever ran was bought out by a successful businessman of Austrian descent by he name of Otto. I saw him bring a load of mushrooms that were obviously Agaricus xanthoderma back to his kitchen one day, so I told him they're probably not safe to eat (they also taste awful). He said "rubbish, I've been foraging mushrooms for years".

I left at the end of that vintage but returned to the area running a different winery about 20 years later. I saw Otto being driven past one day, looking very unwell and the owner of the second winery told me he had terminal liver cancer. Possibly not related, who knows.

Slightly related but fun, there's a wood rot fungus Omphalotus nidiformis which looks a bit like the Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) and is moderately common in SE Australia, I once had a large number growing on a stump in my front yard. It is quite toxic but its most notable feature is that it glows in the dark (apparently all bioluminescent fungi are toxic).