Goerwitz

This is a blurry picture (taken in dim light) of hen of the woods mushroom (grifola frondosa; also known as maitake). It's past its prime, yes. But it's cool all the same.

When I lived in East Providence, Rhode Island, I used to hunt for hen of the woods mushrooms with a friend, Patrick. He has lived in that area since birth (except for a few years in Sweden), and let me in on all the secret spots where he knew he could find super good mushrooms. They say you should never eat a mushroom picked by a friend, but this particular species is so distinctive that it's hard to misidentify it. And because hen of the woods is spongiform (not the often viciously toxic kind of mushroom with familiar caps), even if someone does misidentify it, the results are unlikely to be lethal.

Anyway, when we moved to Minnesota, I figured I'd probably never see another hen of the woods specimen in the wild again. They're quite rare. But on a hunch, in a stand of trees that just "looked right" based on what my friend Patrick taught me, my daughter, Jariya, and I went looking. Lo and behold, we found some. I danced around like a kid I was so happy. (Jariya had no idea why, so I had to explain it to her. But next year around this same time of year she'll understand, because I'll take her back there in time to harvest some.)

By a stroke of luck, Nancy Braker, the new director of the Carleton College Arboretum, is doing a mushroom walk on the morning of October 25th this year (2008). I hope to ask her some questions about hen of the woods in our area, and about other mushrooms. I don't plan to pick and eat anything except hen of the woods, though. I don't trust my mycological skills, or anyone else's, for that matter, to eat anything I'm not absolutely certain of, and that has any poisonous look-alikes.