Hello gang,
My name is Aubrey Carter and I’m a mushroom guy. I write Mushroom Mondaya weekly mushroom education blogbut this is my first post for The Trek. I wish I had written to you sooner, but I’m not the most tech savvy, so figuring out WordPress took me a couple hundred miles.
I became interested in fungi from an ecological perspective while working as a gardener in Central Park. I read tangled life by Merlin Sheldrake during Covid and became completely mycelial. When this whole AT adventure is over, I want to write a book that combines mushroom education with trail narrative… but we still have thousands of miles and mushrooms to go between now and then.
I’m now entering from the public library in Hot Springs, North Carolina, at mile marker 275. Interestingly, the plumbers are here because someone tried to flush a book, page by page, down the toilet. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to hear well enough to figure out which book was the culprit. Anyway, we sheltered here after getting showered this morning during our eleven-mile hike into town, and decided to extend our stay in Hot Springs by checking into the historic Sunnybank Inn.
Before we dive head first into mushrooms, let me give you a disclaimer. Don’t read this and then go out and eat the mushrooms you find. Or if you feel overwhelmed by the mushroom persuasion, don’t blame me. If you are interested in foraging, the general rule of thumb is to have three separate points of identification: confirmation from an experienced forager, confirmation from a field guide, and confirmation from an online resource such as mushroom spotter either iNaturalist will do the trick.
What I’ve eaten (or drank) so far
Chicken of the Woods (Sulphurous Laetiporus)
We didn’t encounter this mushroom until our first rain in the Nantahala National Forest, north of Franklin (a blessed start to getting over 110 miles before the rain). We found this huge wave of chickens of the woods at the end of the day on a dead, standing oak tree. In my experience, it seems early in the year for the species, especially when it is so strong. Normally you have to wait until autumn to see fruiting of this caliber. In the northeast I have seen the fungus grow quite modestly, perhaps one or two clumps, as early as May, but April was the first time.
The mushroom attempted to set fruit after a rain in early April, but withered during the subsequent drought and never formed full shelves. The recent rain we walked through generated a new wave of primordia (immature mushrooms) and I was able to harvest a small portion. This species definitely rejects the idea that you can’t eat brightly colored mushrooms, as these polypores are orange on top and neon yellow on the bottom.
I usually roasted or sautéed them, but I just tossed the chunks into the boil and ate them with instant mashed potatoes and fiddleheads (which were then poured into tortillas to make mashed potato tacos, as I went along).
We also found some good fruiting just at the end of the trail past Standing Bear Farm and Hostel. Some people had already harvested some, but there was plenty to go around, both insects and humans.
Chaga (unknown oblique)
I was pleasantly surprised to see this mushroom in the Smokies. Chaga is considered the richest natural product in antioxidants known to humans. It’s a mushroom we’ll probably see quite often in the White Mountains and Maine, but this was the first time I’ve seen it in the south.
It may not seem like much, but the black chancre on the right of my hand is the sclerotium, a tight knot of hyphae (the body of the fungus) used to store nutrients. It is not the reproductive structure of the mushroom, so technically chaga is not a mushroom. Chaga is about 90% wood, and many of chaga’s antioxidant properties come from the betulin and betulinic acid it concentrates from the birch tree hosts. It is a parasite of birch, but the tree can typically live for decades as the fungus slowly leaches nutrients.
Chaga grows slowly, so you never want to harvest too much. A couple of tablespoons is enough. I usually make tea with chaga, but I opted to break up some crumbles and cold brew it in my water bottle. It worked surprisingly well and I got a light brown brew after a few hours of steeping maybe half a tablespoon in a liter of water.
What I found but forgot to eat
The pheasant’s back grows from a dead wood trunk and is surrounded by bee balm (Monarda)
Pheasant back (Scaly Cerioporus)
Also called dryad’s saddle, it is a typical spring edible. We found this right at the Derrick Knob Shelter while making a pit stop before a final six-mile push to take us to the Silers Bald Shelter, and were able to catch the free hiker shuttle at Kuwohi on the last day it was in operation (4/30). It rained the day we found them, and I grabbed a small mushroom to cut up and throw on top of our dried Pad Thai, but by the time we cooked it was 7:45 pm and I completely forgot about this little guy in my tackle box. We have seen these mushrooms several times, but I have yet to cook and eat them. Perhaps some things are better observed and appreciated.
The mushroom I would most like to find
The above description was obtained from the Fungi Diversity Survey Northeast Rare Fungi Challenge (https://www.fundis.org/northeast-rare-fungi-challenge).
Hazelnut fingersRhododendrons hypocreopsis)
This mushroom is not considered edible. I lured you in with the appeal of edible mushrooms, and now we’re going to appreciate mushrooms with narrow ecological niches. If you’ve been essentially anywhere in tOn AT, you’ve probably tunneled through rhododendron and mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia). Well, it turns out there is a mushroom on the list Fund the Northeast Rare Mushroom Challenge which grows on the trunks of rhododendron and mountain laurel. The fungus is best known in Europe, where it grows on hazel trees (Corylus avellana), but, interestingly, this fungus is believed to be a parasite of another more common fungus, diffuse hydranoporesand does not affect the host plant at all.
It’s hard to time every log of rhodium and mountain laurel we pass without tripping or stubbing a toe, especially since each bush has multiple trunks, but I’m hoping that just by passing a couple thousand miles of them I’ll get lucky and stumble upon this rare mushroom. The Northeast Rare Fungi Challenge has also included the Appalachian Zone (Clavulinopsis appalachiensis) which I will settle for as a consolation find if my hazel fingers escape me. If you’re not in the Northeast, don’t worry, FUNDIS has a rare mushroom challenge for every corner of the country. Find yours here.
The East American Platterful mushroom (Megacollybia rodmanii) found near Burningtown Gap. Technically edible, not many people eat it as it is not considered an option and it is quite fragile, so not good for walking around.
Thanks for reading. If you want more weekly information about mushrooms, you can subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter and read all my archived posts from the last 5+ years.
The positive thing about waiting for rain at the Hot Springs Public Library is that it means there are more mushrooms on the horizon. I promise it won’t be another 275 miles before I go up another post.
aubrey
References:
(PMC free article)(PubMed)Windsor C, Kreynes AE, Chilton JS, Chioffi WA, Krishnamurthy A, Ishii M. Chaga Comparative Study (2010).unknown oblique) Dietary Supplements through Complementary Analytical Techniques. Int J Mol Science. 2025 Mar 25;26(7):2970. doi:10.3390/ijms26072970. PMID: 40243601; PMCID: PMC11988691.
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