Wild Harvest Life - Winter Family in PNW

My husband and I absolutely love matsutake mushrooms. Whenever we walk through a forest where matsutake might grow, we are not looking only for mushrooms. We also pay attention to the trees, the soil, and the smaller plants covering the forest floor. Sometimes we see thick carpets of green moss. Beargrass may be growing beneath the conifers, and patches of salal may appear nearby. None of these things can guarantee that matsutake mushrooms are present. Forest habitats are complex, and mushrooms do not appear simply because one particular plant is growing there. But there is one unusual forest plant that matsutake hunters often notice more carefully. Fresh candysticks rising together from the summer forest floor in the Pacific Northwest. It is called candystick , or Allotropa virgata . And whenever we find it, our matsutake hopes become a little stronger. A Summer Search We Had Not Expected Matsutake hunting has always felt like an autumn activity to us. I think of cool mornings, damp f...

 After several rainy days, my husband and I began wondering whether mushrooms might finally be appearing in the mountains. We both love matsutake mushrooms, cauliflower mushrooms, and almost any mushroom hunt that gives us an excuse to spend time in the forest. After watching videos of other people finding matsutake, we decided to climb to a higher elevation and look for ourselves. We are not professional mushroom hunters. We are simply a couple who loves matsutake, other wild mushrooms, and the excitement of discovering something unexpected beneath the trees. Unfortunately, the mushrooms we hoped to find were not there yet. We saw many Candysticks, a few coral-like mushrooms, and then something completely different—a pale cluster rising from the mossy forest floor. At first, I wondered whether it might be Pinesap. At first glance, it looked almost like a cluster of tiny mushrooms. But this unusual forest discovery was a flowering plant called Gnome Plant (Hemitomes congestu...