Train wrecker or scaly sawgill. Wild edible mushroom identification

Identification difficulty: Novice

Behold Neolentinus lepideus, commonly known as the scaly sawgill or, in a somewhat antiquated use, the train-wrecker mushroom. If you are using older guidebooks (pre 1985) the Latin name will be listed as Lentinus lepideus. 

Though most commonly called the scaly sawgill, I simply love the drama of the name train wrecker, so that's what I'll be using here.

Just look at all that dense, bug-free mushroomy goodness

The train wrecker is edible, though often downplayed, invalidated and ignored. Called tough, woody, fibrous and bland, it's passed over for more popular late spring and early summer delights.

But that's a shame, because the train wrecker is, when SUPER fresh, not at all tough or woody and while it's not one of the most flavorful mushrooms, it's amazingly dense, meaty texture more than makes up for that fact. 

Also, this mushroom is only rarely attacked by insects.

The train wrecker can also grow quite large, providing quite a lot of food. Across North America it's rather uncommon, but can be regionally abundant.  If you are foraging in forests east of the Rockies that identify as "Piney Woods",  (New Jersey Pine Barens, Texas Piney Woods, etc), during the rainy season, there is a strong likelihood of encountering this mushroom, even if you aren't looking for it. 

N. lepideus can also be found in Western Europe, though apparently much less abundantly.

Train wrecker mushroom identification

Growth habits 

• Found exclusively on dead conifer wood or stumps, especially pine, most often east of the Rocky Mountains
• Note: The train-wrecker can also be found on cut logs and boards, both treated and untreated, especially west of the Rocky Mountains. These should not be consumed. The mushroom can pick-up toxins from the treatment and pass them on to you. Only eat mushrooms found growing on natural materials, in areas that seem unpolluted. 
• Grows individually or in clusters of caps from a single stem

Cap and size 

• This is a large mushroom. Caps range in diameter from 3" to 10". 
• Cap is white, beige, yellow or even orange in the middle, and generally lighter means fresher.
• The cap of N. lepideus has dark, chocolate- or amber- brown scales in the center. 

Gills 

• The gills for the train wrecker are often described as serrated, or saw-toothed, but I don't personally like this description, as it implies triangular shapes that are fairly evenly sized and distributed.
• To me, the gill edges are like torn paper, or the edges of very old books; they are jagged, irregular and often feature square shapes or small nicks.
• Gills are moderately spaced, which means there is generally a gill-space in-between two adjacent gills.
• The gills attach to the stalk (which is technically called a stipe), and are often decurrant (they extend down somewhat onto the mushroom stalk).

Stem/Stipe

• The stipe (mushroom stem) for N. lepideus is quite distinctive. 
• Stem features fibrous scales, facing upwards towards the cap (unusual), which peal backwards towards the base of the mushroom.
• Fibrous scales start out as white, but will turn dark brown quickly, especially at the base
• When broken or cut, the stem is like a thick, dense cotton in texture.
• The stem is pretty much the same thickness along the whole length, it doesn't really taper, and is only wider at the base if it joins to other mushrooms. 
• Clusters of caps can share a stem at the base, but the base may be buried in the wood, making stems appear separate.

Elderflower identification and foraging: don't confuse for deadly poisonous water hemlock

Identification difficulty: Intermediate

Warning: This plant has been mistaken for the very deadly water hemlock. Ingestion of water hemlock can kill in 15 minutes to 2 hours -- often less time than you can get to medical attention.

Even if correctly identified, parts of the elder plant: including roots, bark, leaves and green fruit are poisonous. Only the flowers and ripe fruit are edible, in moderation, and the fruit must be cooked. 

Thanks to their etherial beauty, it's easy to imagine elderflowers as magical

Elder quick history

The shrubs we call elder, members of the genus Sambucus, grow throughout most of the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, and were once a staple food and medicine for many different peoples: Native Americans, Europeans, Asians and North Africans. Everywhere it grows its been revered, used as food, flavoring, in wine and liquor-making, medicine, basket making, for perfumes, natural dying and cosmetics, and ritualistically. In Europe especially, elder bushes were believed to have magical powers and to be inhabited by benevolent spirits.

Black elderberries are the most common U.S. varieties 
east of the Rocky Mountains

Elder varieties 

There are many individual species of elderberry, all in the the genus Sambucus. They are bushy shrubs or small trees bearing large clusters of white or off-white flowers, though some varieties have been cultivated to bloom pink.

Elderberries are most often defined by the color of their fruit: black, blue or red, though there will be many individual species and varieties producing fruit of each color. In Australia there are also white or yellow-white fruiting species, but I have no experience with them. 

Please note: in this post we will be looking at the flowers of black elderberry, but the tips here will also apply to the flowers of blue elder.  The flowers of red elder look quite different.

Finding black and blue elderflower 

It's hard to see in this picture,
but this enormous grove of elderberries
were growing alongside an old stone
millstream

Some of the best places to look for elder plants, flowers or berries, as well as places to avoid.

• Old homesteads and farmlands, especially directly by the old home, or as the dividing edges between two farms. 
• Along old millstreams, especially the kind with stone embankments. Beside old millhouses or lands that formerly had a millhouse.
• River and creek banks, high bluffs over wetlands, and areas that occasionally experience seasonal flooding. All of these areas should have good drainage without long periods of standing water.
• Drainage ditches that would border old farmland, orchards, pastures and especially vineyards. Don't risk contamination by picking from plants growing in culverts off highways, industrial areas, or active farms using pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
• Suburban parks and residential developments built on former farmlands or wetlands.
• Elderberries do not like standing water or areas that flood frequently and remain soaked. If you find a similar-looking plant in these kinds of environments, you most likely have deadly water hemlock, and you should avoid!

 

Identifying elder in the flowering stage

Elder is reasonably easy to identify when fruiting, but when it's in flower the list of potentially poisonous look-a-likes grows significantly longer and more dangerous. 

Elderberry growth 

Blue and black elderberries are large shrubs or small trees that can grow up to around 10-12 feet tall. 

Sometimes elders grow quite bushy and filled-in, but when crowded into a forest with other trees they will often grow more like a tree--with branches spaced thinly, spread out to catch the light. 

Elder bushes will start to produce flowers and fruit at about 2 years old, often when the shrub is as short as 3ft tall. 

However, at this age it may still have green stems with no bark. If you are inexperienced, it's advisable to wait till the shrub has bark, as the safest way to rule out deadly poison hemlock. 

All 7 of the "leaflets" on the left make up one true leaf. The same with the 9 leaflets on the right.

Elderberry leaves

Elderberry leaves are "oddly pinnately compound". 

Compound means that each leaf is actually made up of multiple "leaflets", see the picture above for more detail. Pinnately means that the leaflets are directly opposite one another, not offset. And oddly refers to the fact that there are an odd number of leaflets, with one sticking out at the end. 

The entire leaf will be up to 13" inches long, with 5 to 11 leaflets, with 7 or 9 being most common.

Be VERY CAREFUL if you see leaves like those on the right. 

As the leaf grows bigger, the leaflets will appear to branch off into triplets (groups of 3). These are actually new leaf stems (petioles) with new compound leaves forming. Only some varieties of elderberry will grow this way. 

However, this is very similar to the growth of deadly poisonous water hemlock. If you see bottom leaf division like this, make extra sure to check all the other identifying features to confirm you do not have water hemlock. 

Leaf images are for identification only. Elderberry leaves are poisonous. 

Leaflet detail of the black elderberry

Elderberry leaflets  

Each individual black elderberry leaflet is an elongated oval shape with a pointed tip. They also attach to the leaf stem at a point (Red elderberry leaves are more round). 

Leaflets have a subtly serrated edge, which is to say they are saw-like or toothed. The key word is subtle. Elderberry serrations are shallow, often curved partially inward towards the leaf and are very irregular in size and shape.

Deadly poisonous water hemlock has deep serrations that come to sharp points. They angle upwards but don't curve back on themselves, and they are fairly regular in depth, shape and size. 

The veins on elderberry leaflets are shallow, they do not pucker the leaf material. 

Most importantly, elderberry leaflet veins MOST OFTEN terminate with the tip of the serration. 

Water hemlock veins most often terminate in the groves between serration points. 

Elderflowers

Just as the leaves of elder are compound, so to are the flowers. Each flower head, known as an umbel, is made up of tiny white or off-white flowers, each with 5 petals. 

Each flowerhead looks like it's made of lace.

The flowers grow off the very end of the bush branches. They are not nestled into the leaves.

When the flowers bloom, they weigh down the flower head such that it bends backwards, creating a shape like an umbrella, hence the name "umbel". 

Stems/trunks

One of the most important aspects of elderberry identification is the presence of bark on mature plants, which rules out the most dangerous similar-looking plant: water hemlock. Water hemlock is a weedy plant which dies off each fall and grows back. It will never have true woody stems or bark. 

Young elder plants will not have bark yet (it takes 2-3 years) but they also most LIKELY won't flower or fruit. To be on the safe side, make sure your perspective elder plant has bark before harvesting -- it's better to potentially miss out than to risk consuming one of the most deadly plants in the world. 

Horseweed pesto with foraged backyard weeds

In the winter of 2021, when Texas was completely covered in layers of ice and snow, experiencing completely unprecedented levels of prolonged cold, we lost many of the bushes from the front of our house. 

These bushes, while not exactly my style, were planted originally when the house was built in 1974, making them a touch older than I am. These were large bushes too, over 4 feet tall, and each covering a diameter of about 6 feet or so. They left a considerable amount of bare ground in their absence. 

Since then, my husband and I have been at an impasse on what to do with the space. Ultimately we want to cover it with low-water, low-maintenance (no maintenance, really) native plants or shrubs, but everything we've tried to do ourselves has been . . . unattractive at best or straight up dies within days at worst. We will most likely have to hire a landscaper who specializes in that sort of thing, but for now, we have better things to spend money on. 

Right now, its a very messy patch of wild plants--weeds to be honest, which I try to keep below the legal height (12") for weeds in our town. I would love if native or low-water wildflowers would move in, and I've tried to plant daisies, lavender, sage. . .but mostly just the wild lettuce abounds. 

I don't care for wild lettuce, its quite bitter. 

Horseweed patch last week, 
this week it was over 12 inches tall!

On the plus side, a large patch of horseweed has taken over the area near the house, FINALLY giving me access to enough clean horseweed to cook with. You see, I usually find horseweed in all sorts of unsavory areas, such as the cracks in the sidewalk in downtown Dallas. Sometimes it even grows up through the storm drains from the sewer. Not appetizing. 

So even though I've known about horseweed for years, this has been the first chance I've had to really experiment with it in the kitchen, from a source I know to be clean and contaminate free. 

My husband, who prefers a tidy yard, is being extremely patient with me, so long as I keep it from growing too tall, as horseweed can grow to nearly 5 feet!

I was doing alight for a while nipping bits here and lopping the tops of plants there, but all of the sudden the patch decided it was gonna GROW. In one week the plants ranged from 4" - 6" to 12"-18", and my husband was like, "we need to harvest and use a LOT of horseweed this weekend".

The largest plant in the yard, separate from the main patch. 
It shot up to 2feet from 8inches in one week!

With that in mind, I decided to try a pesto, and I'm glad I did. 

A pesto is one of the best ways to get a comprehensive sense of the flavor profile of a plant. Just nibbling on a leaf really doesn't give your palette enough to draw on. When I taste horseweed raw, all I taste is herbs, mostly oregano and parsley. While horseweed tastes great raw, when cooked a whole new array of flavors open up. 

Honestly the plant tastes like an herbal blend. I get the freshness of parsley upfront, with a citrus-y brightness, like a mix of lime and grapefruit zest, after that the herbal oregano flavor hits, and then the sweetness of anise on the back of the palette. Really quite spectacular. 

People keep telling me I need to try horseweed tea, and while I'm generally not a weedy tea kinda gal, the flavor of the pesto and the smell of the cooked horseweed makes me want to try it. 

Disclaimer: At first I thought the walnuts were too strong for the horseweed, but after tossing it with the pasta, they mellowed out and the flavors really came together. That said, I would use fewer walnuts next time. One thing I would recommend is cutting down the number of walnuts you use, as indicated by my picture above. 

Horseweed pesto

1 colander full of horseweed leaves and very soft tops 

1 1/2 lb dried pasta 
3 tablespoons of walnuts
4 oz of parmesan or other hard cheese, or vegan cheese, roughly sliced
1/3 cup of olive oil + extra 

3 cloves of garlic, sliced

salt 

1. Start around 4-6 cups of lightly salted water boiling in a large pot for the pasta. 
2. Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a small frypan; toast the walnuts, tossing occasionally, until blackened on at least one side. Remove the nuts from the pan.
3. Heat more olive oil in the frypan, add in the garlic and sauté, stirring, until garlic is fragrant, soft and ever so slightly darkened. Remove from heat. 
4. When the water comes to a boil, blanch the horseweed before straining out with a slotted spoon. Then add the pasta to the water. 
5. While the pasta continues to cook, add the blanched horseweed, the blackened walnuts, the cheese, garlic and olive oil to a food processor and puree. If needed, pause to push down the sides before continuing. Taste and season with salt as needed. 
6. Toss with the cooked pasta, I found that this coats about one and a half pounds of pasta to the coverage I like, shown in the pic at the top. 

This pesto is delicious immediately, but it's just as good reheated later, as the flavors will come together more. 

You can make this dish vegan with vegan cheese. 

Pasta fagioli with foraged horseweed, edible wild weedy plant

Pasta fagioli, pronounced pasta fazool by my Italian American in-laws, is a traditional Italian peasant meal whose name means "pasta and beans."

Like most peasant fare, pasta fagioli was derived of simple, affordable ingredients and cooked as a soup or a stew to make those ingredients go farther. It's warm, filling and nutrient-dense, with lots of protein, packing a ton of flavor in every bite. It's one of my all-time favorite soups!

The version I make is vegetarian, though you can add bacon, pancetta or prosciutto if you aren't tied to a vegetarian diet. Honestly though, I've never found that meat adds anything of value. Using chicken stock instead of veggie can be quite nice though. 

You certainly have this plant near
you somewhere

Horseweed is an incredibly common and abundant plant in the aster family. It can be found in all 50 states (introduced into Alaska and Hawaii), every Canadian Provence except Nunavut and the Yukon, throughout Mexico and in most of the non-island nations of Central America. It has been introduced into Eurasia and North Africa.

Horseweed is somewhat related to the herb tarragon, though not especially closely; I only mention it because they have a similar flavor profile, though horseweed tastes more like oregano and less like anise. I also think horseweed is less versatile, though certainly a flavorful, enjoyable herb in its own right. It has a mild version of the famous/infamous "aster" flavor. And it smells amazing. 

Because horseweed reminds me of oregano, I tend to put it in Italian dishes, egg dishes, and soups and stews of all kinds. I've made it in pasta fagioli before, but this is the first time I really feel like I got everything right--the base soup recipe and the horseweed balance--so now I'm sharing it with you. 

A nice patch of horseweed in my yard

Pasta fagioli with foraged horseweed wild plants

Serves 4-5 as a main course

8 oz (1/2 lb) small pasta, like ditalini
12 cups of broth or stock*
Two cans of white beans, cannellini or great northern, drained and rinsed
One can of red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
One can of diced tomatoes
Two large handfuls of young horseweed leaves, roughly chopped
4 oz parmesan cheese or cheese rind, cubed (omit for vegan)
1 large, sweet yellow onion, diced
1 entire head of garlic, peeled and minced
1/2 stick of butter, or equivalent olive oil
Optional (omit for vegan/vegetarian): 2 oz diced pancetta, bacon or prosciutto 

1. Heat butter or oil in a large stockpot, add in onion and sauté until translucent.
2. When onion starts to brown, add in garlic, horseweed, and meat if you are using, continue to sauté until onion is caramelized, garlic is fragrant and horseweed is soft. Remove all from pan. 
3. Add beans, cheese, tomatoes and broth or stock to the pot and bring to a simmer. 
4. In a separate pot, bring water to a boil and cook pasta according to package directions. 
5. Continue to simmer the beans, stirring only occasionally, for around 30-40 minutes, until the beans are super soft, almost mushy. 
6. Using a slotted spoon, strain about 1/2 of the beans from the pot and add to the onion/garlic/herb mix you set aside. Try not to remove any of the tomatoes or the cheese, leave them in with the broth. 
7. Using a hand-mixer or food processor, puree the stock, tomatoes, 1/2 beans and cheese. This will make the soup thick and hearty. 
8. Add the pasta, the onion/herb/garlic mix and the removed beans back to the main pot and heat till warmed through. Season as desired with salt and/or pepper. Serve immediately with crusty bread and/or a salad. 

*I used "Better than Bouillon" Italian Herb base

I really cannot emphasize enough how delicious this soup is. It's my favorite pasta fagioli version of all time!

Foraging for Goldenrod, Avoid Poisonous Ragwort

Young goldenrod shoots growing up from
last year's dead plants. This is probably
the best age for the stalk + leaf combo

Identification difficulty before blooming: Novice 

Identification difficulty after blooming: Beginner

Goldenrod shoots and leaves are in season right now. 

There are over a hundred species of Goldenrod, all of which are members of the genus Solidago, and they are mostly native to the Americas, although some come from Eurasia. There are far too many to learn each one, though in time you will become familiar with the varieties that live near you. 

And there will be a goldenrod near you, as varieties of the plant are available from parts of South America, all the way north into Alaska and the northernmost Canadian provinces.

Goldenrod is generally considered to be an easy plant to identify, and it is, so long as it's in bloom. 

Before the flower blossoms, goldenrod has several look-a-like species, at least one of which is poisonous, and I don't think this look-a-like gets enough attention in the foraging world. 

But before we go over that, let's talk about goldenrod in general.

Goldenrod taste and uses

These goldenrod plants are about 4ft tall,
at this stage you can break off the top 
5 inches, as long as it is tender.
The leaves are also good here.

The entire above-ground portion of goldenrod is edible. The most common use is a tea, brewed either from the young leaves or the flowers, with the flower-tea more often served chilled. Tender leaves can also be eaten raw or cooked, though they are strongly flavored and are best mixed in with other greens, like in a salad. The young shoots (under 6 inches or so) and tender tips of growing plants can be used as a cooked green, though they are also quite strong in flavor. 

Leaves and plant tips should only be used before the flower buds form, after that they loose flavor and become tough.

You have to really enjoy strong-flavored plants to like goldenrod. The flavor has been described as similar to licorice, though I personally disagree. Perhaps some varieties do taste like black licorice, but in my experience, Forager Chef's description of "the Aster flavor" is more appropriate. It has a strong flavor unique to the aster family, which is otherwise hard to describe.