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Ontario Mushrooms


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I see we have added a few more members from Ontario. Welcome aboard. We used to have an active Ontario thread going before we had to move the forums, then we lost some folks in the move and the thread didn't restart. We might have enough now to get one going so lets give it a try. We can use this thread to post Ontario finds and questions about Ontario mushrooms and any other Ontario issues. We will of course also welcome folks from Quebec and the maritime provinces so we could end up with an eastern Canada thread and that would be fine because after all these folks wish they were in Ontario.

Vito, if that was you who made an account last week maybe you could get a few more club members to come join us here.

Im hoping we can get our Ontario members to start posting their finds a bit more freely so that everyone can become aware of what is fruiting right now. No we dont expect anybody to post up their secret locations but the more information everyone has the more mushrooms everyone will find.

Just a quick update on local conditions. When I say local I mean the area within say 30 miles of Mansfield. In July we had a month of blistering heat with temperatures nudging 100F and it was dry. I think that hurt a lot of the mushroom species. We have had decent rain in August but it hasnt been enough to get everything fruiting the way it should be fruiting. There are chanterelles around but not in the numbers that we usually see. Most of the summer boletes simply didn't fruit this year. The most reliable mushroom right now is the lobster and there are some decent but not spectacular fruitings around. There was a flush of Leccinum a week or so ago so it looks like they survived the heat and I dont think what I saw was the main flush. Im seeing some Lactarius thyinos and my brother reports some L. deliciousus. The Lactarius indigo crop seems to be a fail for this year. Missing also are the parasols, Macrolepiota, which usually flush at the end of August in large numbers around here. My brother Mr. Anchovy reports finding 5 giant puffballs on the weekend so they are fruiting right now and if you know where some live dont wait too long.

What are you finding?

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The honey mushrooms will be starting likely in the next 3 weeks depending on rainfall and temperatures. I *might* be willing to sort of lead an expedition to harvest these tasty treats. The deal would work like this.. We have a LOT of honey mushrooms in the Mansfield area and I am in the woods enough times each week to know where and when to pick. This would be strictly a meat hunting trip. If we collected some non honies that would be fine too but we would focus on honey mushroom. If you were interested you would send me a message with your email address so I could communicate with you. There would not be a set date for the expedition, instead when I started seeing a serious fruiting I would email those who had indicated they wanted to go and tell them which day the trip would happen and where and when we would meet. The foray would likely happen on a Saturday and we would likely meet at main tract of Dufferin forest (but it is unlikely we would foray there) at some civilized time like 9 am. I would not expect that you would get more than a couple of days notice. I would want to have a minimum of 2-3 people show up or I wouldnt bother. I would also want to see enough of a fruiting to be sure that everyone would get more mushrooms than they could reasonably use or I wouldnt bother. It is also possible that I wouldnt find a fruiting big enough to bother with (although that is unlikely) and if that happens we would simply not go. I would expect participants to be able to identify a honey mushroom, this would not be an education session and you will need to be able to identify the honeys safely on your own. So dont be shy even if you havent been actively posting here. You do need to be a member here in order to send me a message to join the trip so if you have been lurking then now is a good time to just join. Joining is free and painless and has no downside so jump in. I likely will not post any sort of reminder here, either there is enough interest to make a trip happen or there isnt but Im hoping we can do it because it would be neat to meet some of the folks who come here.

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Well since you've restarted this topic, I suppose I should start posting again. After our walk, on Saturday, I felt the need to run down to Oakville and check out my old chant spots. Normally a reliable forest for chanterelles, mixed boletes, and leccinums. Apparently there hasn't been rain, this century, there. Rock hard clay till on bedrock needs a good soak and obviously there hasn't been one. After an hour and a half the only thing of any interest was two big jack o lanterns. Feeling a little aggravated I checked out a Wellington county forest, that looked like it was mainly pine with some maple. Not the best forest but hadn't really been through it before. Once I started getting off the main track and down a few ridges I found a big spruce/cedar bog. Nothing spectacular fruiting, however there were enough, l. thyinos, s. pictus, ab. gracilis, and hericiums, to make it worth while. Along with large numbers of a. muscaria (huge ones), s. americanus and various russulas. Perhaps not the greatest after six hours in two spots but better than nothing at all!

P.S. the Labrador is one tired little dog.

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OK I add my Sunday report (sorry, no pics). After driving my son up to summer camp in the Huntsville area, on the way back in the afternoon I went to check a few good spots in the Georgian Bay area. Nadda. Soil is dry like ######, ditches and small creeks are all dried out, not even russulas or the likes. Then I checked another spot close to Orillia- same thing. After I was about to give up I checked a spot near Barrie and bingo: in about couple of hours I found about three dozens good lobsters, some nice milk caps and took about a dozen of russulas and few assorted boletes for the frying pan. Found tons of old or wormy russulas. I am not a big fan of russula mainly due to it`s fragile texture but this time I decided to take few young specimen and fry them in butter with potatoes and onions. Found few lactarius indigo beautiful mushroom. I walked out of the forest when it started getting dark, jumped in the car and had a quick look at my odometer, showing 550 km for the day (yikes!)

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The first fall foray of the Mycological Society of Toronto will take place this Saturday, Sept 3 at the main tract of Dufferin Forest. Looks like 15 organized forays for the group this fall plus their annual weekend extravaganza. If you live in Southern Ontario and want to learn more about mushrooms and how to identify them then joining this group is a pretty good deal. They allow you to participate in one foray prior to joining to get a taste for what it is all about so you dont have to join "blind". They are a good group of guys and they get my seal of approval. Their website is at http://www.myctor.org/ . I should point out that their forays lean towards collecting a large diverse bunch of mushrooms and then learning how to identify them rather than heading to the woods for the sole purpose of collecting edibles. Yes everyone on the forays grabs all the edibles they see but they are still concerned with filling the specimen table on each foray.

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mister - Do you like those Lactarius deliciousus? I've seen them around here but haven't worked up the nerve to try them, mainly becuase Aurora says they're not really all that delicious.

From what I understand, it is the texture that puts alot of North Americans off (kinda mealy). I have a Polish friend living in France who swears by them, but they are probably a slight variation on the species we find over here. Unfortunately, I have yet to find one to try for myself. I am very interested in Mr. Anchovy's response in case I ever do find them, as I am very curious.

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ACK! Sorry, I didn't see where I was. I am not from Ontario and have no business shooting off my figurative mouth here.

My apologies!!

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Just got in after checking a few, Acton area, forests. Seems like the brief rain showers over the past couple of weeks have had an effect. Although I didn't find great numbers of edibles there is a good variety of mushrooms up. Principally various russulas and lactarius with lots of corts, trichs and amanitas. Of interest for the table; a few leccinums, giant puffballs, l. indigo, l. thyinos, hedgehogs, lots of hericiums,oysters and aborted entoloma.

Of note were some attractive fruitings of purple corts along side amanita muscaria.

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I was out for about a half hour with a 6 quart basket to grab some stuff for supper. Filled that then loaded up my backup grocery bag with nice lobsters. There were a lot of mushrooms fruiting today. I think if I had made a serious effort at collecting lobsters I could have counted my take in bushels. They are a lot of work to clean though and I picked more than I intended.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah, It's a tough go now for mushrooms here so I switched to some salmon fishing for now with few nice ones caught in lake Ontario. I was out in the woods few times last week and managed to get few leccinums, lobsters. some lactarius and boletes, barely enough for one frying pan and a bowl of soup The soil is very dry. Was wondering how the mycological Society of Toronto made it out. Maybe somebody from the Society can post here. Let's keep our fingers crossed for some rain.

Coral

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Amanita muscaria

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Leccinum aurantiacum

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lobster

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  • 2 weeks later...

There is a big flush of shaggy mane happening in my area now. Here is yesterday's catch. I picked more than enough for a big pot of cream of shaggy soup and left the rest. I have dried shaggy mane with decent results but I just dont need more dried mushrooms right now so I only pick what I need for supper from this flush.

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Unless they're already turning or turned black, they will be as white as snow !! Try the hard buttons, battered & fried. Make sure you have a spatter screen to cover the pan. Too much moisture , they spatter in the grease.

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The process of turning to a black inky goo is caused by an enzyme. Once you heat the mushroom to cook it the enzyme is deactivated or killed or whatever it is that happens to enzymes and the mushroom suffers no loss of quality at all. If they are white when you heat them they stay white. That is also the secret to dehydrating them... use a dehydrator that generates good heat. They dont rehydrate into anything with texture but if instead of rehydrating you powder them they can add quite a bit of flavor to a dish. I try to have them cooking within 2 hours of being picked, and I can do that easily because I have good patches within a 5 minute drive- close enough that driving over to get some for breakfast isnt as stupid as it sounds.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is great to find this interactive discussion on wild mushrooms! I am a new member and new to Ontario mushrooms. I use to pick wild mushrooms over 20 years ago in Siberia, and haven"t been brave enough to try it here in Ontario. Lots of new ones I am lerning about. Over Thansgiving weekend I came accross an ubundunce of different mushrooms. Tryed to identify them and one of them I think is honey mushroom. I am in London ON, and I seen some young ones and also some past their prime, they must still be in season this time in October. Once I fugure out how to post photos, I will add them. With all this rain we are having, second day now and it's not going to stop until Monday, I am hoping to go out again for some fresh pick.

Thanks for this wonderful site!

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geez we have had I think 5 new members from Ontario join so far during October. I'm wondering if we are getting some of the Mycological Society of Toronto members dropping in. It would be excellent if about 100 of them joined! Maybe some of the new folks could tell us how they found us if they arent shy :)

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