Salt Point Foraging!

 Having gotten a good 4+ inches of rain the last couple weeks, it was a pretty ideal day to look for mushrooms here in Northern California.  I was accompanied by my friend Katie, who is quite experienced in mycology and foraging, particularly in Salt Point State Park, which is a very popular spot for mushroom hunting.  We hit the road at the crack of dawn on a bone chilling Sunday morning (it has been a pretty cold fall/winter here this year) eager to dive into the coastal forest ecosystem, where it was actually a beautiful clear day, and not too cold.

A nice chestnuty-looking fella emerging from the pine needles

The underside of some type of Bolete, a genus of fungi that are referred to as "polypores" due to their lack of traditional gills under the cap, instead having this spongey-looking arrangement of many pores.

Arctostaphylos columbiana (aka "Hairy Manzanita") caught my eye with its hairy stems and leaves, a characteristic not shared by most (any other?) manzanita species.  Also, what a nice surprise to see some blooms already (I'm used to seeing those more mid-to-late winter on the species in the Napa area).  Hummingbirds buzzed overhead, feeding from the dainty little inverted-urn flowers.

A bolete with a manzanita flower.

Our first edible find of the day were these hedgehog mushrooms, a new one to me, but a favorite of Katie's.  They are recognizable by a distinct peachy-off-white color on the cap and these "teeth"-style gills on the underside:

Gills are so cool-looking. . .

Spiders: net-fishers of the sky

After a close call stepping on one of these blobs on the trail we were counting our blessings, thinking it was the product of an intestinally-upset canine... but as the morning progressed we noticed many more such blobs, some right atop fallen tree trunks.  So apparently it is not animal biproduct at all, but some sort of fungal or other mysterious organism?

Cute little family of unknown "saprophytes", a term referring to fungi that feed on decaying organic matter such as wood.

The ever-photogenic Amanita muscaria, with its flaky cap and lipstick-red "Don't eat me!" coloration.

An interesting darker-colored species of hedgehog mushroom, again with telltale teeth.  We did not harvest this type though.

Some nice violet hues on unknown specimens:

The forest was a scattered mix of pines, occasional redwoods, tanoaks, occasional madrone and manzanitas... it was interesting to me to see a habitat with redwoods, but that isn't redwood-dominated, as redwoods have a tendency to monopolize areas where they prosper.  Here is the burned-out trunk of one... a ring of younger trees surround this dead center, and they are actually the same living tree that this one once was part of.

It was a fantastic and fascinating day of exploration, army-crawling through brush, and scanning the forest floor like nerdy maniacs.

We made off with a substantial haul of Black Trumpets, Yellow Feet Chanterelles, Hedgehogs, Pigs Ears, and Candy Caps.  Maybe later I will add pictures of our bounty, but I didn't take any yet, except for the candy caps, which I have drying in front of the heater... as they dry, their aroma transforms from bland mushroom-y to a strongly pungent maple flavor--a great addition to sweets and baked goods like cookies!

Thanks for tuning in!