My original anvil stand from a few years ago started to get wobbly so I made a pressure treaded stand and have been using the old stump stand to place tools on while forging.  We have had a ton of rain the last month and the stump has been left out in the open.  A few weeks ago mushroom started poping out of stand everywhere.  It turns out they are a pretty tasty edible mushroom that grows in the wild in NC.  We are gonig to be frying them up for diner over the next few days (after I get a spore print confirming they are what I think they are).  

 

Hope you are not wrong, we may never know,  may the odds be ever in your favor...

Mushrooms or fungi?

 

You may want to have those positively identified before you go any further. The county extension agent is your friend and a phone call away. The good ole boy next door has nothing to loose if he is wrong in his identification, except a neighbor. Your call. 

 

IFI pushes safety first.

Be sure you are right.

Hey Guys, 

 

I have a mushroom expert from NCSU that is taking a look at them and the spore print before we actually eat them.  I probably should have mentioned that in the original post.  

 

Hopefully this will be the anvil stand that keeps on giving.  If the mushrooms are what I think they are it sounds like it may fruit mushrooms for a few years :).  

Probably the oddest use for an ex-anvil stand I have ever heard of! Good you are getting expert help; as I recall in my reading for almost every edible variety there is a poisonous one that looks very similar indeed!

Hey Glenn, 

 

From my limited understanding Mushrooms and fungi are one in the same.  Mushrooms are just the fruiting part of fungi when the fungi reaches maturity in what ever medium (my anvil stand in this case) it is inoculated into.  

Well, worst comes to worst and it's the wrong kind, it could be a source of spalted wood!

If worse comes to worse, Would He have a spalted body. :o

no just not a working liver for a short amount of time...

Yeah but it's a myco fungus and the caps are the basidiocarp. The fruiting body. I'm  coward, I don't eat wild shrooms though there's always bunches of folk up here picking them after it rains.

 

We do have a "fern gully" that produces fiddle heads prodigiously in spring. Fiddle heads. . . Mmmmmmm. Lots of shrooms too I just don't eat them.

 

Expert help is a GOOD idea. For a gauge of confidence and expertise, see if he'll eat them after he IDs them.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

Yes, expert help! You are a brave man!

Well it turns out they are turkey tail mushrooms which are not poisonous to eat but aren't really edible either because of how tough they are.  They are used in Chinese medicine as a cancer treatment.  Maybe I will make some mushroom tea :)

Glad you got a positive ID on them.

Be sure that if you collect them, you do not get a stray variety in the mix.

There is also "false turkey tail" out there which looks similar and is poisonous. I didn't want to weigh in because I do not try and guess just from pictures ever. If your expert says they are turkey tail 100%, and you choose to try to use them, they are best when made into a tea (you can dry them out in the oven on a low heat) or you can make a decent mushroom stock out of them. 

Frosty, what was that medieval quenchant? Theophilus, circa 1120 A.D. : "the urine of a goat fed ferns for 3 days..."

Intrex,

 

Exercise caution on the wild ones. Its real easy to get the ID wrong and as a result, you can have all sorts of nasty things happen. Keep that poison control number handy and save a sample.

 

On a lighter note, I have seen similar mushrooms to the growth you show. They were harvested and boiled into a tea of sorts. The tea was then used as a homeopathic cancer treatment. Allegedly, when someone gets cancer this tea will isolate the cancer wherever it is located and stop it from spreading. I have seen the same fungus on old growth oak trees in some parts of Maine. Where found, the  Elevation is usually less than 1000 Ft. and in my case, always around 45 Deg North Lat.

 

Be safe,

Peter

Frosty, what was that medieval quenchant? Theophilus, circa 1120 A.D. : "the urine of a goat fed ferns for 3 days..."

 

Ouch. I thought the smell of cat doing business in the coal box was bad on the fire...........with one of the girls in season, the smell our billy goat (named Barsky) puts out now is deadly at under 300 meters, can't imagine what it would be like heated.....or how you'd collect it for that matter.

 

 

We do have a "fern gully" that produces fiddle heads prodigiously in spring. Fiddle heads. . . Mmmmmmm. Lots of shrooms too I just don't eat them.

 

I miss Fiddle heads. When we lived in Kodiak there was a never ending supply in the spring and summer. I would eat them raw as I hiked along and loved them fried in butter with garlic and some salt and pepper. I might pass on the shrooms though.

I'm about 2 1/2 hrs east of Intrex. Too many shrooms to pick from here.

Theophilus gives instructions on how to collect it too; however none of them involve hitting the old goat with a tree.

Hey Crazy Ivan, 

 

The only real differentiating piece of a turkey tail vs the false turkey tail is the polyspore holes on the underside of the mushroom.  These definitly have the small holes where the turkey tail deposits its spores. 

 

On a side note mushrooms are completely crazy little organisms.  There are soo many different variations it is mind blowing. 

The things you learn on a blacksmithing site !!

Who would have thunk it.