Offering a recap (particularly our first on our website!) is a bit daunting, to say the least. We’re only two people, and our efforts are centered mainly in Curry County on the southern Oregon Coast, as well as in the Mt. Hood area of northwestern Oregon. You may well read this and scoff that your experience was totally different. Nevertheless, we have to call ‘em like we see ‘em, so here goes.
Hedgehogs are always a favorite!
The season had a slow start on our part of the coast, and massive fruitings of golden and white chantrelles did not occur, as they do in some years. Not much rain in July and August may have been the culprit, and while we certainly got all the chantrelles we needed, we’d have to rate ’07 as a below average year for that species. We did better for chantrelles, particularly whites, around Mt. Hood in early October. However, in neither case were they as widespread as in many years.
What beautiful small boletes!
Boletes were a different story. This was the year of the bolete! We found quite a few Boletus Edulis (the King Bolete) on the south coast from October well into late November, and even managed to beat the worms to many of them. We also found several other varieties of prime boletes, with the Orange Capped Boletus being noteworthy because we haven’t found it before. It’s a gorgeous mushroom, and large; we found several 8 to 9” across, and equally tall. They have – surprise! – an orange cap, with a whitish stem at least an inch in diameter and speckled with small black spots. In flavor, they are nearly the equal of King Boletes, but the most unusual aspect is that they bruise to a lovely lilac color where cut!
Mt. Hood did not produce many boletes for us on our lone October foray, nor did we find Cauliflowers (Sparassis) there. We did, however, find two lovely Coral Hydnums on Mt Hood, pretty as pictures and totally delicious.
Closer to home, we did find several small cauliflowers (they are our personal favorite), and matsutakes were, in places, abundant. We found a number of mushrooms that we didn’t recognize or had not previously encountered, and had to key out of Mushrooms Demystified; it was simply an unusual year.
All in all, on the proverbial scale of 1 to 10, we would rate the ’07 fall season as a 4 for chantrelles and a 9 for non-chantrelles.
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