2025 was another crazy year. I thought life slowed down as one got older but I’m busier and busier each year. For the last 7 years I have been lucky to also live and work alongside the community in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (dtes). 2025 was a year where I had to travel to my family over the summer and then back to dtes in September. I was so happy to return to BC and so very grateful that I get to live here – In dtes and on the Sunshine Coast. I was not able to make it up to the coast from the city until almost December and there were still some great finds. And smart me, I now have insurance: I showed my mushroom interested neighbours how to identify chanterelles. And here’s the good news… they don’t like to eat mushrooms so they saved their findings for me! How welcome was that! I have the best neighbours!!

And with the universe kicking me some needed happiness, I adopted the sweetest dog, Beya Mar, in October. She was alone on the streets of Mexico City and I was lucky enough to adopt her. She arrived at the end of October and rescued me. We came to the coast at the end of November and got into the forest as soon as possible. She loved it!

So again for 2025 I am posting all the photos in this one post. From my neighbours finds to Beya Mar and my finds on Soames Hill. Hope your foraging in 2025 was wonderful.

So, let’s get to the photos of these wonderful beauties. I know you know who they are. The photos start with my neighbours chanties and then our finds from December.

Beya Mar exploring Soames Hill. December 2025
Bit different from the streets of Mexico City.

Hope your 2025 foraging was the best and see you in the forests in 2026!

2024 was a bittersweet year for me. Wonderful moments shared with my dog, friends & family and also sad times around the same. I would like to thank everyone for their empathy and wisdom: for being so kind to me throughout this thing called life – both friends and strangers alike. I am thankful and so very grateful to all who allowed me to grieve in my own way – being there when I needed company, understanding when I needed space and supporting me no matter what. I am so very lucky.

My travels into the forests in 2024 became focused on the amazing mushrooms who manage to find their way to the light even though the going is tough. Springing up from their mycelia, punching through obstacles in their path to emerge triumphant from the underground. I know mushrooms are teachers and I never felt it so much as I did in 2024.

I’m posting all my 2024 photos in this one post. Found From October – December on Mount Elphinstone, in Sprockets Park and on Soames Hill. Thank you to everyone Addie Fern and I met in the woods this year. It was wonderful exchanging information about locations where we found loads of lobsters (they seemed to be everywhere), chanties (so many, and until mid December!) and pines (two wonderful days of tripping over them on Elphie before the wind storms blew up, felling trees and making the trails impassable and unsafe). Thank you to my new city friends who came for their first time foraging.
It was a wonderful season for my beautiful Addie Fern and me. She and Meron are forever in my heart and forever racing through the forest.

So, let’s get to the photos of these wonderful beauties. I know you know who they are.

To get to the BenofDares one must pass through the Valley of Giants.

After the sighting of the Phellodon melaleucus, which already made it a successful outing for McDowell, Balfour continued leading the trek to the BenofDares. The air was thick with anticipation. Entering the Valley of Giants they climbed over and under trees that had fallen in the latest storm, through the green undergrowth of moss and ferns and stopped in amazement. Everywhere they looked were big, bold chanterelles with stalks so thick they must have had a bolete Mom.

Check out the stalk on that beauty.

This way to the Valley of Giants. Be careful where you step the forest floor is full of mushroom villages.

A little nest of pines and no bugs! Often the small pines are buggy but these were white all the way through.

Huge, gorgeous chanterelles were glowing throughout the forest floor in groups and villages.

McDowell would have taken more photos but it took all her time just to keep up to the chanterelles that appeared in groups, then in villages and then towns. So many perfect chanterelles. Later that night McDowell had one for dinner – one! What an adventure. And we haven’t even made it as far as the BenofDares yet. Will we ever?

About Cantharellus cibarius

Cantharellus cibarius, commonly known as the chanterelle, golden chanterelle or girolle, is a fungus. It is probably the best known species of the genus Cantharellus, if not the entire family of Cantharellaceae. It is orange or yellow, meaty and funnel-shaped. On the lower surface, underneath the smooth cap, it has gill-like ridges that run almost all the way down its stipe, which tapers down seamlessly from the cap. It emits a fruity aroma, reminiscent of apricots and a mildly peppery taste (hence its German name, Pfifferling) and is considered an excellent edible mushroom.

More information: Cantharellus ciborium, Wikipedia

About the Matsutake Mushroom (Tricholoma matsutake)
and the White Matsutake (Tricholoma magnivelare)

Matsutake (Japanese: 松茸, pine mushroom, Tricholoma matsutake = syn. T. nauseosum) is the common name for a highly sought-after mycorrhizal mushroom that grows in Asia, Europe, and North America. It is prized by the Japanese and Chinese for its distinct spicy-aromatic door.

In the North American Pacific Northwest Tricholoma magnivelare is found in coniferous forests made up of one or more of the following species: Douglas-fir, Noble Fir, Shasta Red Fir, Sugar Pine, Ponderosa Pine, or Lodgepole Pine. In California and parts of Oregon, it is also associated with hardwoods, including Tanoak, Madrone, Rhododendron, Salal, and Manzanita. In northeastern North America, the mushroom is generally found in Jack Pine forests. T. magnivelare is typically called White Matsutake as it does not feature the brown coloration of the Asian specimen.

More information: Tricholoma matsutake: Wikipedia and Tricholoma magnivelare: Wickipedia

September 206 was dry and we were really searching hard to find a mushroom. September 15 is McDowell’s parents anniversary and usually she celebrates with a day of foraging chanterelles. This year she managed to find one in the forest on Lower Road. Well, even one chanterelle is enough to celebrate with. Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad.

Happy Anniversary to my Mom and Dad and to everyone in the mushroom world kicking off another fall season!

About Cantharellus cibarius

Cantharellus cibarius, commonly known as the chanterelle, golden chanterelle or girolle, is a fungus. It is probably the best known species of the genus Cantharellus, if not the entire family of Cantharellaceae. It is orange or yellow, meaty and funnel-shaped. On the lower surface, underneath the smooth cap, it has gill-like ridges that run almost all the way down its stipe, which tapers down seamlessly from the cap. It emits a fruity aroma, reminiscent of apricots and a mildly peppery taste (hence its German name, Pfifferling) and is considered an excellent edible mushroom.

More information: Cantharellus ciborium, Wikipedia

Woods have been so dry this summer that mushrooms were hard to find.

McDowell was traipsing around finding nothing when she heard Balfour cry Oh Jayun. And behold a little family of chanties of which one was massive. McDowell immediately called out Biggest Summer Chanterelle Ever! Balfour, who is not as excitable, declared it the Biggest August Chanterelle.

McDowell would have been happy finding the two little ones. But that Balfour always pulls a chanterelle out of a hat… And then McDowell puts it into a frying pan!

So even though the mushrooms haven’t started popping, it’s the dog days of summer and McDowell has figs to harvest, firewood to split, deer hanging in the backyard, a new skateboard and late nights of kayaking and howling at the moon. Happiness abounds.

Every August McDowell has 100s of figs to harvest and holds Figlapalooza. Just look for the big fig tree, listen for the music and come on by!

About Cantharellus cibarius

Cantharellus cibarius, commonly known as the chanterelle, golden chanterelle or girolle, is a fungus. It is probably the best known species of the genus Cantharellus, if not the entire family of Cantharellaceae. It is orange or yellow, meaty and funnel-shaped. On the lower surface, underneath the smooth cap, it has gill-like ridges that run almost all the way down its stipe, which tapers down seamlessly from the cap. It emits a fruity aroma, reminiscent of apricots and a mildly peppery taste (hence its German name, Pfifferling) and is considered an excellent edible mushroom.

More information: Cantharellus ciborium, Wikipedia

Balfour fills it with summer chanterelles and a few hedgehogs!

The chanterelles remind McDowell of the mushrooms she picks in Ontario: Firm, perfect texture and bold concentrated taste. We just gathered a hatful because the dogs were whining about not getting a decent walk in with us stopping to ooo and ahhh over these babies.

The hedgehogs (not shown because they were first picked and in the bottom of the hat) are a mystery to us, usually they don’t appear until fall. We’ll have to ask them.

Just look at the ridges standing proud. Yes bit dry on the ends. What a beauty.

About Cantharellus cibarius

Cantharellus cibarius, commonly known as the chanterelle, golden chanterelle or girolle, is a fungus. It is probably the best known species of the genus Cantharellus, if not the entire family of Cantharellaceae. It is orange or yellow, meaty and funnel-shaped. On the lower surface, underneath the smooth cap, it has gill-like ridges that run almost all the way down its stipe, which tapers down seamlessly from the cap. It emits a fruity aroma, reminiscent of apricots and a mildly peppery taste (hence its German name, Pfifferling) and is considered an excellent edible mushroom.

More information: Cantharellus ciborium, Wikipedia

Walking with friends and what do we find in February but the apt named Winter Chanterelles aka Yellowfoot / Yellowfeet?. Not as golden as their cousins and a bit waterlogged from the winter rains, but still a delicious and welcome treat, in the cold months.

February 20, 2016

A pretty good collection for February!

About Craterellus tubaeformis

Craterellus tubaeformis (formerly Cantharellus tubaeformis) is an edible fungus, also known as Yellowfoot, winter mushroom, or Funnel Chanterelle. It is mycorrhizal, forming symbiotic associations with plants, making it very challenging to cultivate. It is smaller than the golden chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) and has a dark brown cap with paler gills and a hollow yellow stem. C. tubaeformis tastes stronger but less fruity than the golden chanterelle. It has a very distinctive smokey, peppery taste when raw. It grows in temperate and cold parts of Northern America and Europe, including Scandinavia, Finland, Russia, and the British Isles, as well as in the Himalayas in Asia, including Assam, in the central parts of the Indian Subcontinent, and in Thailand .

C. tubaeformis is a yellowish-brown and trumpet-shaped mushroom found in great numbers late in the mushroom season, thus earning the common name winter mushroom. The cap is convex and sometimes hollow down the middle. The gills are widely separated, and of lighter color than the cap. It grows on moss or rotten wood, and in Northern America it is found mostly in conifer bogs. It is an excellent food mushroom, especially fried or in soups, and is easily dried for preservation.

More information: Craterellus tubaeformis, Wikipedia

And so this is the latest-in-the-year chanterelle ever found by Meronwood.

December 27, 2015

Pretty darn gorgeous for a December baby!

About Cantharellus cibarius

Cantharellus cibarius, commonly known as the chanterelle, golden chanterelle or girolle, is a fungus. It is probably the best known species of the genus Cantharellus, if not the entire family of Cantharellaceae. It is orange or yellow, meaty and funnel-shaped. On the lower surface, underneath the smooth cap, it has gill-like ridges that run almost all the way down its stipe, which tapers down seamlessly from the cap. It emits a fruity aroma, reminiscent of apricots and a mildly peppery taste (hence its German name, Pfifferling) and is considered an excellent edible mushroom.

More information: Cantharellus ciborium, Wikipedia