Identifying and foraging wild black trumpet mushrooms. Edible, delicious, and easy to ID

 Identification difficulty: Beginner          

This is probably a mushroom I should have introduced in year one. The common name: black trumpet, actually refers to several closely related species: Craterellus fallax (North America), Craterellus cornucopioides (Europe), Craterellus foetidus (Eastern and Mid Western North America), Craterellus caeruleofuscus (North American Great Lakes region), and possibly more. Some of these names are being re-evaluated in the age of DNA testing, and there may prove to be either more or fewer species than we thought. 

In addition to numerous scientific names, these mushrooms also go by a variety of common names,  including: horn of plenty, trumpet of death / trumpet de la mort (in France), devil's trumpet or devil's horn, and black chanterelle. 

From a culinary and foraging standpoint, all of the above appear nearly identical, taste about the same, and can only be distinguished with location, spore prints, microscopic analysis, or small details present in large collections. From here on we will treat them as one in the same. 

This is one of the best tasting wild edible mushrooms you can find. I prefer black trumpets to their more famous cousins, the chanterelles, and to the king bolete/porcini or morels. I compare their flavor positively to truffles, the most expensive of all fungus. However, if you were to simply cook these as you would any other mushroom, they would taste good, but you would be missing out on the best ways to use their flavor. 

Best of all, black trumpets are incredibly easy to ID, with no poisonous look-a-likes, making them perfect for the beginner mushroom hunter. 

The underside of black trumpets lack true gills, but may appear wrinkled.

Identification: shape & color

Black trumpets look like . . . black trumpets. Ok, that's a bit of an oversimplification, but it's essentially true. 

These mushrooms are vase or bull-horn shaped, and generally black, dark grey or dark brown in hue. If the mushrooms are exposed to the sun they can dry out and lighten, sometimes to a light gray or tan, but will still have all the other features in this section. You can avoid these lighter specimens until you are more experienced, but as long as you follow all the other ID tips here, there really are no poisonous look-a-likes.

The top "cap" of black trumpets are more or less round, with a flower-like ruffled edge. As they age and dry out, these edges frequently split.

Certain varieties have raised spots or pimple-like markings on the inside of the funnel. 

In some collections, the top and inside will be darker in color than the underside.

The underside of black trumpets lack true gills. They may be smooth, crinkled, or have linear groves that vaguely resemble gills, but are actually wrinkles in the mushrooms surface, rather than separable gills. The undersides may be lighter in color than the inside and top and/or may become lighter the closer it is to the ground.

Identification: texture

Black trumpets are very thin-fleshed. When rubbed between your fingers they should feel slightly soft, and they also tear easily. They should not feel hard or rubbery (see devil's urn mushrooms, below). 

The thin flesh is generally a good deterrent for bugs, I rarely if ever find insects eating these. Slugs and snails are another story, they will cheerfully munch on black trumpets. Sometimes insects and spiders will make a home inside the funnel, just gently knock them out. 

Black trumpets can be found growing individually or in clusters. I most often find them in small groups of 2-3

Identification: season and location

These are a summer and fall mushroom, (winter in the deep south). I've personally never found them earlier than late June in the Northeast. The similar looking (but non-poisonous) devil's urn is a spring mushroom, found in March (in the south) through April and early May, but not into June in my experience. 

Black trumpets are mycorrhizal (symbiotic) with hardwoods, notably oak, ash and beech. They like more mature forests, where the tree canopy provides lots and lots of shade--especially shade far out from the tree. I rarely find the mushrooms directly under the trees, but more often near the edge of the canopy. They like it damp, so look for rich, dark, moist soil. Moss is also a good indicator. 

Most pictures of these mushrooms show them against moss, and moss is one of the best ways to see them. In terms of abundance, however, I find them most often on gentle slopes of low hillocks, not more than 10-15 feet high. The best black trumpet hunting I've found was in the beech-oak heavy hardwood forests of Rockland County, NY, where the landscape rolled up and down about 15 feet over and over and over. In bumper years, each slope of these small hills would be carpeted in black trumpets. 

In one notable exception to this rule, I found one medium-sized patch of black trumpets at the very edge of of the root system of a ENORMOUS oak tree more or less isolated in a rocky area. This oak was so large and tall that it's canopy really didn't provide shade to the area beneath it, meaning these mushrooms were growing in a pretty sunny area. However, the mushrooms were ONLY growing in areas protected from the sun by large patches of briar-plants, thus giving them the shade they needed.  Did I collect them despite the briars, you ask? Yes. Yes I did.  

Unfortunately, black trumpets blend in perfectly with their ideal, shaded hillside landscape. It turns out that the ruffled shape of the mushroom, plus its black-brown-grey color is ideal camouflage for an area covered in dead brown-black leaves. They also somehow manage to resemble small rocks, or even the dirt itself. 

To find the mushrooms, walk SLOWLY, looking more or less straight down (not ahead of you, and don't use your peripherals). Take time to analyze the shape of everything you see -- is that really a leaf, or is it a mushroom? Once you find one patch, scan the area, black trumpets rarely grow alone. Get down on your belly and look around for unusual "bumps" in the leaf litter around you -- they could be mushrooms pushing up the dead leaves. 

You can often find black trumpets growing near their cousins:
cinnabar chanterelles

In the Northeast, I found cinnabar chanterelles, Cantharellus cinnabarinus, to be a good indicator species for black trumpets. With their bright orange color, the chanterelles are much easier to spot then their camouflaged cousins, and about half the time I find C. cinnabarinus I find black trumpets in the near vicinity. 

Identification: look-a-like species

As mentioned earlier, if you follow the above rules, you won't run into anything poisonous that resembles the black trumpet. It's one of the safest mushrooms for a beginner forager to start with. 

Photo credit: MushroomObserver.org via Wikipedia

Blue Chanterelles (edible)

The closest look-a-like to black trumpets are also choice edibles: the blue chanterelles, aka members of the genus Polyozellus. Blue chanterelles are closely related to chanterelles and black trumpets, and share their vase-shape and lack of true gills. 

To differentiate, blue chanterelles are generally deep blue-black, or purple-black in color, and always grow in clustered growth, forming masses about 10" around or greater. Apparently some clusters can reach 3' in diameter! Polyozellus grow in the Rocky Mountains of the United States, and west into California. I am not sure about their growth in Canada. 

Photo credit: user Vavrin, via Wikipedia

Pigs ears (edible for some)

Gomphus clavatus and Gomphus crassipes, commonly known as Pigs ears, or the violet chanterelle, also resemble black trumpets, at least slightly. They also have vase shapes, and their lavender-gray or pink-brown colors can be confused with lighter specimens of Craterellus. 

However, pigs ears are thicker and fleshier than black trumpets--they feel like a solid mushroom, and they always grow in fused clusters. While lacking in true gills, the wrinkles on the underside are deeper and more pronounced than that of Craterellus. Gomphus species are almost always found at altitudes above 2000ft, but black trumpets are generally found below that; in the US they are also mostly found with conifers. 

Gomphus species are edible, when young and well-cooked; as they age they become bitter and tough. A significant number of people will experience gastrointestinal distress from these mushrooms, especially if not very well cooked. In Europe this fungus is threatened, and may not be legal to harvest. 

I apologize for the poor quality image, this is one of my oldest photos
from my earliest point-and-shoot digital camera, circa 2008

Devil's urn (edible but not recommended)

Black trumpets are sometimes confused with devil's urn mushrooms, Urnula craterium, despite them not being closely related. 

The fungus is similar in size, color and overall shape, but is much firmer-fleshed than the black trumpet, feeling rubbery when young, and later hard or tough--like hardened tire rubber. Devil's urn also fruits in the spring, rather than the summer or fall. 

Devil's urn is apparently edible, I have not tried it. In one of my favorite quotes from his book, 100 Edible Mushrooms, Michael Kuo says it's not as bad as he expected, and ". . . it would be possible to eat it with a forced smile if your Aunt Wanda served it to you."

Preparation: the best ways to eat black trumpets

Chicken with black trumpets, white wine and garlic

You absolutely can cook black trumpets in a little butter or olive oil, garlic and white white (or a cream sauce) and toss with a pasta. The resulting dish will be truly heavenly. Yet as amazing as that will be, it still won't live up to the potential this mushroom has: to use it as a spice!

Similar to truffles, the flavor of black trumpets can be used to infuse other things, adding rich umami to less flavorful meals, or creating complex flavor combinations that explode in your mouth. 

Just a few dried black trumpets can flavor an entire meal

To start, dehydrate the trumpets, then either use them whole, chopped finely or powder them.  As a powder you can sprinkle them directly on meat or fish before cooking. Chopped finely they can infuse a broth or cream to use as a base for gravies or sauces. Used whole, reconstitute them in and use both the mushroom and the liquid they were reconstituted in to add umami mild-flavored meals. 

Rice-and-cheese stuffed zucchini boats, where the rice has been infused with black trumpet essence

Use them to infuse the cooking water of rice, make a broth/stock, infuse cream as a base for gravies or sauces, William Fisher even infuses white wine with them! 

You can also mix them in with less flavorful mushrooms (think white button mushrooms, puffballs, cultivated enoki and beech mushrooms), and a few dried black trumpets go a long way!

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