this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Depending on what you have near you, there are a few safe species that are as good as they are easy to distinguish:
Pleurotus sp. - Oysters, growing on trees or deadwood. Very distinct shape.
Cantharellus sp. - Chanterelles, growing on the forest floor in open spaces. Very distinct shape and colour.
Hericium sp. - Lion's mane, growing on trees or deadwood. Very distinct shape.
Morchella sp. - Morels, growing on the ground. They have closer lookalikes than the above genera but can still be distinguished pretty easily from those and look like nothing else.
Boletus edulis - The trickiest of this list, growing on the ground next to spruce/fir/pine trees. The genus is super easy to distinguish but identifying the species within that requires cutting it open.
I'd never pick anything generic-looking like a little brown/white mushroom. Those are where you really risk being poisoned. With these you'd want a field guide to positively ID them but you get good at that fast. There's probably a mycology club in your area which organises regular foraging trips with experts and I highly recommend doing those. The Colorado Mycological Society is a huge resource here.
Fwiw, mycology has had a pretty big boost in popularity/notoriety here (take your pick) due to a high profile murder case outside of Melbourne which just concluded today, in which a woman was found guilty of three cases of murder and one of attempted murder, by poisoning a beef Wellington with death cap mushrooms she foraged herself.
Her case is why the only white mushroom I'll pick is a Hericium species. Death caps look so close to young puffballs that it would be an easy mistake to make unintentionally. If it's brown or white it needs to have a very distinct morphology for me to feel comfortable even IDing it.
How do you prepare a lion's mane if you pick one? I've only ever seen it as a health supplement
Lion's mane is delicious. It's mainly used as a lobster/crab cake substitute because it has a similar consistency and taste. Just soak it to remove nesting bugs and slice off any dirty parts. Then cut it into thin slices and put them in a dry pan over medium heat. You need to cook the water out so they soak up oil, so I cook them on their own for 3-5 minutes. When they've shrunk but not burned, I use olive oil/sea salt/black pepper/garlic/onion and cook them for another 5~ minutes until browned. They pair great with white sauce pasta, rice, stir fry, and tofu dishes.
I wish I had deciduous forests around here for them. They're probably the easiest to spot and ID of all of those.
Thank you! This whole thread has been an education. I won't find them growing anywhere near me unfortunately but home cultivation seems doable
You can cultivate lions mane with totem method, I have done it successfully
It's probably the cheapest and easiest species to grow. I drill holes in 5 gallon buckets stuffed with hydrated and pasteurised straw. The colonies can be grown from liquid cultures on grain or just recycled from the inner mycelium on a store-bought/foraged specimen. As long as the area is semi-shaded and kept humid, they're so productive.
Straw as a medium is clever. Would be interesting to try fall leaves
I always do logs. BodybySysyphus had a post about using paper cat litter which is sterile out of the bag. Thought that was a cool idea, zero risk of contam.
I will say lions mane yield on logs hasn't been great so far but only two seasons in. They tend to go for the interstitial sawdust layer first before getting to the trees. My oysters are finally at the point now where they are booming on the totem but it's season 3.
If you haven't read it yet, Paul Stamets' Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms is a fantastic resource for substrates: https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Permaculture/Growing_Gourmet_and_Medicinal_Mushrooms.pdf
It goes into the different nutrient profiles required for species and fungiculture techniques for each. Lion's mane is probably the most aggressive widely-cultivated saprophyte. Oysters can be particular about the nutrients secondary to cellulose and environmental conditions, but lion's mane will eat anything with cellulose. Hardwood logs aren't cheap here but every feed store has cheap 50lb straw bales and higher nitrogen alfalfa ones. Whole horse oats are available for like $20/50lb from the same stores, the cheapest substrate I've found for my grain colonies.