Beginner foraging: old man of the woods mushroom identification

Identification difficulty: Beginner

Meet the old MEN of the woods, "Strobilomyces strobilaceus" (though most books will use the term Strobilomyces floccopus) and Strobilomyces confusus. 

Old MEN, you ask? Yes, in the Americas the common name "old man of the woods" is often used interchangably for two different species of Strobilomyces that look rather similar. And there is still a different "old man of the woods" in Europe and Asia.

Confused yet? The naming gets worse.

The Latin name Strobilomyces strobilaceus applies only the European species. DNA studies have shown that the American mushrooms--previously believed to be identical--are genetically different, but a Latin name hasn't been chosen yet. 

From a foraging and edibility standpoint, none of this matters. All species share the same identification features, but if you're curious about species naming, check out the taxonomic confusion section at the end of this post. 

Old man of the woods identification

• A cap and stalk mushroom 
• Pores under the cap instead of gills.
• Mushroom cap is light gray with dark gray to black textural elements. Textures can resemble large gray/black "flaps" that hang down (S. strobilaceus), or small gray/black pyramids that stick up (S. confusus). 

• Pore surface is pale gray to charcoal gray to black. 
• Pores aren't round, instead they are angular polygons, often elongated.

• Stem is also dark gray or black and textural, with dark scales along most of the length.
• Entire mushroom bruises pink or red when bruised or cut. This color slowly fades to gray or black. 
• Found in the woods, growing terrestrially (on the ground) or on logs so well-decayed they are basically soil.

That's really all there is to know about identification, this really is an easy group of mushrooms to ID.

How to identify Golden Chanterelles, gourmet edible wild mushrooms

Identification difficulty: Intermediate

Warning: despite the frequency with which these are foraged, I feel that the risks associated have been downplayed. I personally believe there is the potential for confusion with deadly species. That said, I believe you can learn how to rule those out. 

Summer 2021 is turning out to be a nation-wide bumper year for the greater chanterelle family, which includes cinnabar red chanterelles, black trumpets, and, of course, golden chanterelles. 

Facebook foraging and mycology groups, Reddit foraging and mycology boards are all flush with pictures of, well, flushes of mushrooms. There's a lot of books, websites, etc out there that talk about how to identify golden chanterelles, so I wasn't really sure how necessary another post would be, but at the same time I'm seeing a lot of misinformation or incomplete information going around on social media. 

Overview and history

The term chanterelle can be used to describe a group of related genera (that's plural for genus): Cantharellus, Craterellus, Gomphus, and Polyozellus. Craterellus includes the black trumpets and yellow foot mushrooms, Gomphus includes the pig's ear, Polyozellus is a one-species genus that contains the blue chanterelle, and Cantharellus contains several species of golden chanterelles, red or cinnabar chanterelles, the smooth chanterelle and the white chanterelle. The lobster mushroom, Hypomyces lactifluorum, looks similar but it is unrelated and, while also being a choice edible, tastes completely different from chanterelles of any kind. 

For most people, however, when they think of chanterelles, only the golden chanterelle comes to mind. 

Golden chanterelles are a gourmet wild mushroom, one of the "big five" mushrooms that command the highest prices globally. The "big five" include truffles, matsutake, chanterelles, morels, and porcini. These are the five most expensive mushrooms for their CULINARY value; there are some fungi which sell for higher prices due to their use in Eastern medicine. 

We don't know exactly when humanity began it's love affair with the golden chanterelle. Asian, African and European cultures all have long histories of the mushroom, and we can safely assume it was eaten before it was recorded as well. In Europe, chanterelles were reserved for the nobility for many centuries.

Chanterelles are a mycorrhizal species, they grow in symbiosis with trees. This makes them very difficult and expensive to cultivate, as one would need to both own a forest and be willing to wait for decades while the trees and the fungi mature, before the fugal mycelium would grow mushrooms. 

At one point in time, all golden chanterelles were believed to be Cantharellus cibarius, and older books will still refer to them this way. With the advent of DNA testing, we now know that there are many, many kinds of golden chanterelles, some with sub-varieities, and that C. cibarius only grows in Europe. 

Golden Chanterelles as a group

Since "golden chanterelles" are a group, there are many, many color variations. There are species that are all golden or egg-yolk yellow, some that have white areas, such as a white stem, white gills or a white cap, and some that have those same variations except pink instead of white.

For the sake of this article, the term "golden chanterelle" will apply to any species that is 50% or more "egg-yolk yellow"., We won't be trying to identify individual golden chanterelle species, as all are edible, all are choice and they share many identification features. 

NOTE: Some chanterelles have a tan or deep yellow spot at the center of the cap. I would personally avoid these. And you must avoid all potential "chanterelle" species that have a cap or stem that is entirely tan or brown as it may be a potentially deadly look-alike in the genus Paxillus. Also spore print any all-yellow mushroom with decurrent gills where the stem seems thin for the cap size. 

Why I think chanterelles are an intermediate difficulty to ID

Overall, I think most foraging and mushroom hunting books leave out important potential look-a-like species for the chanterelle. They generally talk about false chanterelles, Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca, and jack o' lanterns, Omphalotus species, as the only real danger. Both these mushrooms can make you sick, Omphalotus can make you seriously sick, but neither will kill you. 

I'm more concerned about Paxillus species, which have the potential to be deadly poisonous. Paxillus are not super common and don't STRONGLY resemble chanterelles, at least not in America. However, there are yellow varieties in Australia, which could always make the cross-ocean trek on tree roots. And there are brown-yellow varieties in North America and Europe which we will go into in greater detail.

As I've said on the page where I define these terms, if I feel there is potential for confusion with a deadly species, then I consider it to be an intermediate difficulty identification.