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mid Oct find


franzjo

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"Horn of Plenty" is a name applied to Black Trumpet mushrooms... either Craterellus cornucopioides (white spored) or C. fallax (spores light orangish). The long stems seen on some of the Oysters in your photo, franzjo, are not typical for Oysters.... but not all that unusual. Nice find! they appear to be prime specimens.

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Congratulation, great finds!

I was in Six Mile Lake Park (135 km north of Toronto, Ontario) in early October and found less than 1 kg of mushroom (Suillus family)--quite disappointing, considering that it had been quite wet and warm. One week later I spent a few hours near Midland, ON and hardly found any mushrooms. Last Sunday I went to the Simcoe County Forest near Barrie, ON and after one hour found just ONE mushroom. I admit that I'm not a mushroom expert and rarely go just mushroom picking, but in the past I was often able to collect many pounds of mushrooms without much effort. I wonder if other people have had similar experience in southern Ontario recently?

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I wonder if other people have had similar experience in southern Ontario recently?

I spent this summer in Ottawa Gatineau area, and it was dead and dry. Even when we started getting some rain in September, it never really seemed to get things going. Usually, late Aug. and Sept. a half hour walk in pretty much any forest would guarantee mushrooms for supper, but this year I think I only dined 5-6 times.

Probably the worst mushroom season in the 12 years I've been picking...

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Well, at least I'm glad I'm in a good company!

Yes, this summer was very hot and dry, I was even unable to have campfires due to fire bans, but Septmeber and October were kind of wet here and I thought there would be plenty of mushrooms.

In September, 2001, I was camping in Arrowhead Provincial Park (near Huntsville, Ontario) and although we did not really plan on mushroom picking (we focused on fishing), there were mushrooms everywhere! Eventually I bought a food dehydrator, moved to an electrical campsite and went home with a few kilograms of dried mushrooms. It was an exceptional year, but very wet too.

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This was easily the worst year I have ever seen for mushrooms in Southern Ontario. The droughty conditions started in April and just didnt let up. When we finally did see some rain it was too late to stimulate the summer and early fall mushrooms. Oh there were some mushrooms around and if you knew where to go you could still mostly get supper but there werent the real big hauls that let you keep the dehydrators running and load up for winter. The good news is next year has to be better simply because it really couldnt get much worse.

I want to say a few words about mushroom hunting areas in general in southern Ontario. Some good news and some not so good news. First the bad news. Picking wild mushrooms in provincially owned Consevation Areas and Provincial Parks is prohibited. If you get caught you will likely be charged and fined. There is a decent chance that if you get busted with just a handful of mushrooms for supper that you might get away with pleading insanity and being very apologetic. If you get busted with a couple of 5 gallon pails and a dehydrator it is gonna cost you. I would be very reluctant to pick mushrooms in Six Mile Lake Provincial Park. On the other hand if I had canoed to the interior of Arrowhead and was camping I would feel pretty confident that I wasnt going to run into a Park Superintendant on mushroom patrol. I have actually seen parks staff go looking for mushroom pickers (and fiddlehead pickers) in smaller parks and conservation areas. This is especially true in areas that have had problems with fish poachers. The parks crews are more likely to make enforcement patrols in those areas.

I also want to say a few words about the county forest system. Back in the early 1900's agriculture was pretty profitable. As a result tens of thousands of acres of forest were clear cut to make way for growing cash crops. Everybody has to eat right? The problem was that most of the soil that was east of the Niagara escarpment (east of hwy 10 for the geographically challenged) and south of about Elmvale was a very light sand with thin topsoil. Once the farmers cleared the trees and plowed under the topsoil the soil structure degenerated in a hurry. In a space of just a few years these soils turned into basically blowsand. And oh did it blow. I have seen old photos of sand drifts as big as a house sitting on highyway 26 near Bariie. Rather than sit and watch southern Ontario turn into a dustbowl the Ontario government stepped in starting in about the 1930's and took some real action. They started to simply buy up large tracts of this now useless dustbowl land and they began a major program of reforestation. The province was not in the forest business and did not want to have to manage this reforested land so they formed a partnership with the counties. The province bought the land, provided the tree seedlings and the labour and technical advice but the counties were to own the land and manage the resulting forests. This agreement is what led to the fairly vast network of county forests. Fine, but how does this affect mushroom hunting? Well for starters you need to remember that mushrooms in general like rich soils with lots of moisture. ok maybe there are some exceptions but in general the richer the soil the better the mushroom hunting becomes. The land that was bought up and reforested was in general the very worst blowsand in the province. Remember the whole point of the county forests was to try to control the sand dunes and wind erosion. Most of the land was planted to monoculture pine. Red pine was the most planted species because it would survive the sand. Some white pine was also used. Basically the province would take a look, decide ya red pine would do best on this site and plant the whole thing to red pine. Some of these plantations are mature enough now to allow some harvesting and this results in a youngish substory of hardwoods to start growing and in fact you can find some county forests that have some healthy young hardwoods happening but you wont find the big mature hardwoods mixed in with the pines. The thing to remember here though is that under the forest is pretty much the worst soil imaginable for mushrooms. The sand is still there. It doesnt hold water . If it rains for 4 days and 4 nights you can be sure that in 48 hours it will look bone dry again. You 'can' find mushrooms in these forests but honestly it is tough going and most days it isnt worth getting out of the car. There is a wee bit of good news with the county forests. Sometimes as part of say a 500 acre tract there would be maybe 30-40 acres that was too rough or too hilly for the farmers to clearcut and this land was left in whatever forest happened to be there at the time - usually mature hardwoods. So if you have the time to scout around the periphery of the pine plantations you can find some hardwood forest but usually just a small percentage of the whole tract will fall into this class and really the soil is still sand in these hardwood areas and sand isnt very good for mushroom growth. In general the county forests are a very poor choice for finding good fruitings of mushrooms. There are some exceptions of course. If a pine plantation gets infested with honey mushrooms for example it can produce monster fruitings. And in October these pine plantations can fruit huge amounts of Tricholoma equestre and if you are inclined to eat them then the pine plantations are where the action is. For the rest of the year I dont really consider most county forest tracts to be worth the gas it takes to get there.

There is another interesting aspect of the county forests. The counties use the forests as an income source. The forests are managed for timber profits. They do allow the public free access to the forests but the truth is they would really prefer it if no one ever set foot in them. It costs them money to clean up the garbage and repair the trails and to put up signs. The county's insurance companies especially would prefer if no one used these forests and I have a vague suspicion that it is the insurance companies that are responsible for many of the forest regulations. You should be aware that mushroom picking is flat out banned in the county forests of York Region and Peel Region. In the Toronto area most of the forests are controlled by the Toronto Region Conservation Authority. These folks dont want you picking their mushrooms. The last time I checked there was no law on the books that actually prohibited it (that may have changed) but they actively discourage picking. I am not certain of the status of the Wellington county forests but I suspect there is a ban there also. I will say that there are folks who hunt mushrooms in the county forests that still allow it but honestly the picking is pretty poor unless you are a fan of honey mushrooms or T. equestre, or if you have spent a LOT of time searching the small pieces of old hardwood that you sometimes find beside the pines.

Ok so you live in southern Ontario and you want to find good mushroom picking... where do you go?

The first consideration is you need to get out of that belt of blowsand that is bounded by hwy 10 in the west, Elmvale in the north, Newmarket in the east and about hwy 9 in the south. Oh if you look hard enough and are able to find a few spots you can do ok in this area but you will go home disappointed more often than you will go home with a decent score. To find the really good picking you need to get away from the sandy soils. That means stay in tight to Toronto if you live there(there is an amazing number of small forests within 20 miles of city limits that are loaded with mushrooms. No I am not gonna draw a map). It means get west of hwy 10. Think in terms of Guelph or Kitchener or if you are willing to drive a bit Grey or Bruce counties. East of the sand belt think in terms of Durham region or the Ganaraska trail system. The real honey spot in Southern Ontario though happens when you get north of the sand belt. Jack, you mentioned being in Arrowhead Provincial Park and there were mushrooms everywhere. That isnt an aberration. The areas around Huntsville, Gravenhurst, Bracebridge and Dorset are dynamite for mushrooms. You cant legally pick in Arrowhead of course but there is about a gazillion acres of forest in the general area. Most of it is owned by lumber companies who really dont much care if you pick mushrooms. Another big chunk is provincially owned land which is not regulated under the parks system and you can pick there as well. In general if you drive down any road, find a nice forest and go picking nobody is going to bother you. If the possibilty that you might be on private land bothers you a bit there are several HUGE tracts of land that are owned by forest concerns but which are also managed for public access. Im not gonna map out where all these are but if you are any good with google you should have no trouble finding a few. One in particular stands out and I will tell you where it is because the thing is big enough that pretty much no amount of picking pressure will make a dent in the mushroom supply. This is a forest known as Limberlost forest and wildlife preserve. It is owned by a lumber company and they are sort of in the business of developing the property for recreational use. It is 10,000 acres of primo mushroom forest with 20 lakes full of fish. There are also 6 cottages available for rent. They happily will let you hike in there for free and collect all the mushrooms you can carry. Their only real requirement is that when you enter the property you check in at the visitor gate, sign a liability waver so you dont sue them if you break a leg or drown in a lake and they give you a badge which they ask you to wear. They will also ask you roughly where on the property you plan to be so if they cant account for all the visitors at the end of the day they will know where to start looking for you.

http://www.limberlostlodges.com/

Is there mushrooms there? Well the Micological Society of Toronto does an annual weekend foray in the general area. Some members pick in Limberlost as part of that foray. Here is a link to their identification list from 2010

http://www.myctor.org/2010%20Vello%20Soots%20Memorial%20Cain%20Foray%20Species%20List.htm

266 species in 2 1/2 days. Professional mycologists verifying the identification so this isnt a wild ass guess. ok for sure not all were found in Limberlost but all were found in the general area, say within a half hour drive. I believe that Limberlost isnt the biggest of the forests that operate like this. Many are smaller but the point is that you wont live long anough to explore 10% of what is available in the area. You can indeed go to Barrie or to the Dufferin forests or others in the sand belt. You might even find some mushrooms there. In my opinion though you are much much better off either staying in tight to Toronto or heading east or west or north of the sand.

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Thanks for your very comprehensible reply! In fact, I had no idea about sand drifts and the reforestation program – and the implications with regards to mushrooms hunting.

I know that picking mushrooms in provincial parks and conservational areas is not allowed and I usually pick them outside of parks. Nevertheless, I had a brochure published by Algonquin Park about mushrooms which said that mushroom picking in the park was OK. When I approached a warden in the park, he told me that in general, it was not allowed, yet he personally did not mind campers picking mushrooms. In other parks, park officials, when asked, said outright that mushroom picking in parks was not allowed, period. While in Six Mile Lake this October, I found very few mushrooms in the park, 95% of my mushrooms were found outside the park. As to the Simcoe County Forest, I had made inquiries long ago about mushroom picking and was told it was OK. The forest I went to is adjacent to the Simcoe County Museum and in the 1990s it was possible to drive there, but now it is fenced off and it is only possible to walk there. Since I have not been to any other county forest, I had no idea that some forests forbid mushroom picking – do they post it?

I remember that mushrooms were everywhere around Arrowhead Provincial Park. We even saw them while driving on major roads and once we stopped, we found many more nearby. It was funny – we went fishing on Doe Lake north of Huntsville and mushroom picking did not even cross our mind then – yet we came home with one pike – and several kilograms of mushrooms! I hardly ever go just mushroom picking – it is usually an activity I do on my canoeing/camping trips. Since I usually canoe about 200-400 km. north of Toronto (waterway parks/crown land), I rarely have to worry about any rules! Besides, so many campers leave piles of garbage, broken beer bottles, cigarette butts and damaged/cut trees that mushroom picking appears to be an almost innocuous activity – sometimes I wish park wardens were more visible and went after those who do REAL damage to the environment.

I have never heard about the Limberlost Forest, thanks for mentioning it, I have already done a Google search. Although there are (according to the webpage) only two campsites, it is possible to do some canoeing, so perhaps I might go there next year. I have visited the privately owned Haliburton Forest and camped there – even though I do not remember any mushrooms at that time, I think it would make an excellent mushroom picking area as well.

I used to be a member of the Mycological Society of Toronto in 2000 and attended a few of its meetings (but never a foray). It is an excellent club, with many members extremely knowledgeable in mushrooms. I live in Mississauga and it was too far for me to drive and attend the meetings; besides, I was often quite busy the evenings meetings were held.

Anyway, I guess I will have to wait for another 5 or so months before I can start mushroom picking!

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I was a member of MST for a while also. Loved it. My problem is I basically live right beside main tract of Dufferin forest. That makes their meetings about a 4 hour round trip drive for me and that is just too far. Pretty much the same is true for the forays. The ones east or west of the city are just plain out of my range. The ones that are north of the city are in my backyard anyways so they tend to be not all that interesting for me.

I will say that joining the group and attending the forays is a wonderful way to get some identification skills happening. The group will typically find 50-100 species in a morning and they all get identified and you can talk to some experienced and very knowledgeable folks about the differences in species and how to identify them. The interesting thing about their forays is that most of them are in the sand belt. This makes for interesting results. I have been on their forays when they collected 100 different species with say 30 people and pretty much nobody gets enough edibles for supper. That is fairly typical for a big forest on poor soil. Lots of biodiversity because of the size of the forest but no decent sized fruitings of anything except honeys and T. equestre and the season for those two is pretty short. I actually live in sight of main tract of Dufferin forest and I dont pick mushrooms in there because it is just too tough to find enough edibles to be worthwhile. When I first started with the mushroom thing I was in there all the time. When I would find 30 species on my own I would be happy as a clam until I started realizing that the 30 species was maybe 40-50 mushrooms total and of that maybe 2 mushrooms would be edible. Once I realized what was happening in these sand forests I pretty much quit hunting them and I started making friends with local farmers who might own 10 acres of creek bottom somewhere close and I was able to develop a network of little tiny patches of woods on heavier soil that were reliable producers of edibles. None of these are big enough for a morning's outing, they can be well searched in 20 minutes, collect what is there and go home which I guess makes them safe from the Toronto crowd but keeps me in mushrooms.

Here is a link to a simcoe county website that basicaly says what I did about the sand belt forests except in a more official format. There is a photo on what the land looked like before reforestation (although i have seen much more graphic photos), you can see the land was basically blowsand. That soil is of course still there but with trees planted on it. There is also an arial view of a county forest and you can quite clearly see the monoculture happening. If you look carefully at the photo you will also see little bits of hardwoods on the periphery.

http://www.simcoe.ca/dpt/cf/history/index.htm

Nice forests not many mushrooms though.

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Hi there from another southern ontario mushroomer. This year was less in bolete species in numbers (sporadic finds) but I did find yellow and red Chanterelles this year compared to last year which was more of a drought condition right in the summer. The one species for me that yielded a bumper crop this year (40 lbs - could of done more) was Lobster mushrooms - they were still evidence of them turning dark red and crumbling in the beginning of Oct. And my terrain is definitely in the sand belt!

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Ya the lobster mushrooms can be our most reliable edible if you know how to find them. Funny though, I know quite a few folks who never find them and some who have never seen one. This is a mushroom that seems to really like a specific type of habitat and if you arent in that habitat you arent finding lobsters.

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Ya the lobster mushrooms can be our most reliable edible if you know how to find them. Funny though, I know quite a few folks who never find them and some who have never seen one. This is a mushroom that seems to really like a specific type of habitat and if you arent in that habitat you arent finding lobsters.

Haven't found one in my rookie year. Maybe next year... I really want to taste some fresh ones! Any tips, fellow Ontarians? :panda:

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I try to remember where I see short stem russulas (russula brevipes which loves sandier soil) & the peppery Lactarius piperatus that the parasitic fungus will attack. Then I proceed to investigate further in area especially on mixed hardwood grade slopes, surprisingly on north and south trails in my area.

post-205-0-24803000-1353344668_thumb.jpg

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