Central Pennsylvania Wild Mushroom Club

There's an old Ray Price country song regarding "Heartaches by the numbers, troubles by the score."  I have often thought that for mushroom hunters the next line of that song might well be "Amanitas by the pound."  On my way home from Alan Seeger I passed an open picnic ground with a group of mature white pine trees in the center.  There between the pines and the road was a patch of large Amanita muscaria.  Even at 45 miles per hour, I knew what they were.  But I had to stop and take a look at these big boys.  A. musccaria is probably the most iconic mushroom in American culture.  It's the big red mushroom with the white warts seen in children's books, on cookie jars, and just about anywhere mushrooms are depicted.  The A. muscaria found on the west coast are usually red, while those found in this area are mostly yellow with the same white warts, fragments of the universal veil. 

And A. muscaria can be huge.  I recall several years ago seeing a single row of pines along the lawn of a large hospital complex.  That row of trees was over a quarter of a mile long.  And growing just at the drip line of the trees was a continuous row of large A. muscaria.  These things were each the size of a dinner plate and growing shoulder to shoulder for a quarter mile!  There were literaly bushels of mushrooms growing in this one location, and not a one to eat.  Boy, talk about heartache. 

I took a few photos of my more recent A. muscaria find, as shown below.  This big boy measured about nine inches across and weighed in at a hefty half pound.  And it was not yet fully mature when I picked it.  I will say in closing that I first found A. muscaria this year in early June.  As the weather turned dry I didn't see any for a period of months.  But then after the big rain, there they were in October.  That's a fairly extended fruiting period. 

Dave