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

These pines (Tricholoma magnivelare, white matsutake) were found in Lower Roberts Creek, Sunshine Coast, BC, Canada.

Balfour waxes on eloquently about the smell of the matsutake. McDowell only smells weirdness. But either way pine mushrooms are the prize of the forest. And once again Balfour found the largest one we’ve ever seen. She had to hold it with two hands. But McDowell got to eat it!

And then we took Balfour’s niece foraging for her first time and she found these!  Oh  My  Dog!

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