Tracker of Plants

Hen of the Woods

Several of the fruits I wrote about in summer will be sticking around into fall with the addition of apple, crabapple, hawthorn, and cranberry (conveniently ready for harvest around Thanksgiving). But when I think of fall I think about a different type of fruit entirely. Fall is THE mushroom season. Mushrooms I collect throughout the fall include hen-of-the-woods (base of oak trees), agaricus species (lawns, baseball fields, graveyards), shaggy parasol and blewit (evergreen hedgerows), boletes (moist hemlock woods and pine plantations), oyster (hemlock woods, on dead beech) and shaggy mane and puffball (various habitats). Two late fall mushrooms I run into include winter chanterelle and the late-fall oyster which can be found well into November, again in dark hemlock woods.

I rarely come across information on Native Americans and mushrooms. I’m not sure why. I think that perhaps it represents a pervasive western European shroomaphobia that has carried over. Like for the most part whites were the people who would have been recording the native uses of mushrooms, but they just didn’t get it. Whatever the reason I’m certain that most native tribes including the Iroquois did not ignore this important food source.

Mushrooms are excellent dried because when you reconstitute them they absorb even more flavor. Try cooking them in a splash of infused herbal vinegar. Chicken of the woods is an exception, it ends up cardboardy, and shaggy mane will dissolve into ink if not used immediately. Remember mushrooms are like fruits. Sharing with others is always good, but it doesn’t particularly hurt the integrity of the tree to pick an apple. Likewise, it doesn’t hurt the network of underground mycelium to pick a mushroom, so feel free to collect liberally. If I were trying to live off wild foods I would dry as many as possible. Mushrooms cooked and marinated in oil and vinegar are really good too and these could probably be canned if you have the equipment.

Fall is also a time of seeds and more importantly nuts. Why nuts? Because they are fatty. You need that fat for the upcoming winter. My all-time favorite nut is the chestnut, which is actually more starchy than fatty, oh well. Unfortunately the American chestnut has been decimated by disease but you can find ornamental Chinese chestnuts. An arboretum near my house has seven Chinese chestnuts exposed to full sunlight and on a good year they produce like crazy. All nut trees tend to go through good and bad years, luckily not all at the same time. Last year, for instance, sucked for acorns but rocked for beechnut. Other nuts of the Allegheny region include hickory and black walnut, but these are found mostly on city streets and old farmsteads. Hazelnut I’ve run into a handful of times but the animals always get to it first.

Your best bet for nuts in the forests of NW PA is acorns. Red oaks are most always found in mixed company with and are more common than white, swamp white, or chestnut or and also happen to have the bitterest acorns. This makes processing super important. I believe that grinding the nuts to a meal before boiling and pouring off the bitter tannins helps speed up the process. I’ve read that the Iroquois boiled their acorns in lye water to help get rid of the tannins. Though I’ve never seen any modern day instructions mention this, it seems like they had their shit together so I’m going to try it the first chance I get. On the subject of the Iroquois, beechnut seems to have been a staple. They were able to collect enough to make nut butter and oil of it, but I’m rarely able to collect enough to call it a snack. Either something has changed ecologically or they had a collection technique I don’t know about. Hmm…

This reminds me that sunflower seeds are ready in late summer/fall. The Iroquois made oil out of these as well. How they gathered and processed enough of these tiny native sunflower seeds I’ll never understand. Perhaps they were already selectively cultivating for large seeds way back when. Luckily, modern giant sunflowers are pretty abundant in city and rural gardens and easy to grow. This is a plant I would consider cultivating in my own yard if I had a garden, but keep in mind you’ll be battling with the birds.

And wait, there’s more! Fall is the best time to go around and harvest dead milkweed and dogbane stalks for cordage, after the plant has had a chance to live a full life by reproducing and forming seeds but before the fibers start to weather in the winter winds. Give a plant a hand as you harvest by scattering its remaining seeds. Hand-drill stalks like mullein and yucca can also be harvested at this time. Last but not least don’t forget this is an excellent time to harvest cattail and milkweed down for making sleeping bags, pillows, vests, and mattresses for those cold winter nights.

Alright, I know I’ve forgotten tons of plants, but I hope you have enjoyed this series and will put some of this information to practical use. Perhaps you now better understand the reasoning behind the harvest time instructions in your field guides. I hope that you see, as I do, that nature tends to provide the foods, medicines, and materials we need at the exact time that we need them.

Note: I used fairly common common names in this entry but if you can’t figure out what I mean just ask and I’ll give you the latin.