September 29, 2014


Yesterday (Sep. 28), I went mushroom hunting alone for the first time in the season, as requested by my son, who was unable to accompany me because he had to prepare for university entrance exams.

First, near the root of this big buna (beech) tree,
I found these puffballs, hokoritake in Japanese.
Hokori = Dust
-take = Suffix meaning mushroom
To be more precise, they are called tanuki no cha-bukuro (Lycoperdon pyriforme) because they grow on a tree.
Tanuki = Japanese raccoon
No = 's
Cha = Brown
Bukuro < Fukuro = Bag
A similar variety that grows from soil is called kitsune no cha-bukuro (Lycoperdon perlatum).
Kitsune = Fox

I also found some kind of houkitake (Clavaria),
Houki = Broom

even my son was unable to identify the exact name.

I also found this mysterious mushroom on a tree.

Luckily, I found some honey mushrooms.
As I said several times in my blog, this mushroom is called naratake in Japanese, but
Nara = Oak
it's called amandare here in the Uonuma region of Niigata. It has some other local names, like kuzure and boribori.

But, yesterday's highlight was definitely these beautiful mushrooms.
When I first saw them, I thought they were a kind of mukitake (Sarcomixa serotina), but I wasn't sure. Anyway, I picked them all.

As soon as I returned home before noon, I reported to my son that I had found something that looked like mukitake. As soon as he looked at them, he said, "They are tsukiyotake (Omphalotus guepiniformis)". He chided me for being such an amateur...
It is said that tsukiyotake is responsible for a majority of food poisoning cases caused by mushrooms in Japan.
As its name suggests,
Tsukiyo = Moonlit night
this mushroom (underside of the cap) glows faintly in the dark. (I tried to take a photo, but in vain.)

Anyway, my son identified all edible mushrooms. I simply boiled them all for less than two minutes, except the puffballs, which I skewered and grilled in the toaster oven. The boiled mushrooms were put in miso soup, and the grilled puffballs were eaten with lemon juice and soy sauce.


Tea Apprentice said...

Amazing. How did your son learn about mushrooms?

Hiroyuki said...

Tea Apprentice: Mainly from books. And, we have participated in several workshops on mushrooms so far.

Fräulein Trude said...

Did you find out something about the black mushroom looking like some variety of rameria?
This year took some horrible toll (biggest ever) here because there where lots of mushrooms during the rainy august. Most of the victims where former russian people. They collected a deadly poisonous mushroom, look-a-like to an edible russian mushroom. The news papers printed warnings. Some nubes even started to collect mushrooms using an I-Phone or Android App - dangerous without any knowledge - geez..

Hiroyuki said...

Kiki: Luckily (laugh), I didn't find any. Sorry to hear about such terrible accidents. Both Russians and Germans are known to love mushrooms...

Yesterday, I learned from a TV news program about a man who ate tsukiyotake given by a friend and became sick. The friend mistook tsukiyotake for honey mushrooms! Just unthinkable!

9895039531 seeandoh said...

I took some snaps of mushrooms from my last weekend visit to a hill station in Kerala, India. But I did not collect it due to the fear of getting Poisoned by eating it.

Hiroyuki said...

seeandoh: The iron rules about wild mushrooms are:
Do not collect, eat, or give (to anyone) any mushrooms you cannot identify with confidence.