Salem, the state of Oregon's Capitol, is a very attractive city. One of the things that's special about it is that years ago, some smart person or committee in state government arranged for trees from other parts of the country to be part of the planting scheme around the government buildings, along with native trees.
Business takes us to Salem a couple of times a year. While walking to a meeting last year, Mary noticed some mushrooms growing below a deciduous tree. Returning to the car later, she stopped to investigate.
They were Boletes, but didn't look like any Bolete with which we were familiar. We scratched our heads, made a few notes, took some photos, harvested the mushrooms and left for home. Only later did we figure out what was going on.
The birch boletes dehydrate nicely.
We hadn't really noticed the non-native trees; we knew they were "different," but were initially focused on the fungi. But the mushrooms, in their wisdom (and our temporary lack of it), gave us the answer.
We keyed out the Boletes as Leccinum scabrum in David Arora's invaluable book, Mushrooms Demystified, but it was their common name that made it obvious: "Birch Bolete." The handsome, white-barked trees that had shaded these mushrooms were Birch trees!
More to the point, though, hundreds of people had walked by those mushrooms, oblivious. Surely some of those people knew something about mushrooms, but no one checked them out. We did; even though our thoughts were elsewhere, our "mushroom radar" is always on when we are out and around, and it paid off. The Birch Boletes are excellent edibles.
As a bonus, they also grow in the same places in following years, as we found to our delight when we re-visited this spot in early October. There they were, in the same place as before, just waiting for us!
You really have to love that in a mushroom!
Steve 10/7/10