My heart sank as I reached the crest of the hill to find my most faithful maitake (hen of the woods) tree standing naked, unadorned. After a summer plagued by drought, I had grown accustomed to such disappointment. But the successful hunter is an eternal optimist, always seeing potential in every fiber of the forest. We’d finally gotten a half-inch of rain, and it couldn’t hurt to get down on my hands and knees and scour for signs of hen.If you’re not familiar with maitake, it is an exquisitely edible and medicinal mushroom with a short, but often overwhelmingly abundant season. One good hen can weigh several pounds; one good oak can host several (I’ve seen up to seven) hens.
Chicken of the Woods, as it is commonly called, is a orange polypore, meaning it does not have gills, rather tiny pores on the underside, with soft flesh. The fruiting body is found growing above ground on standing or fallen rotting hardwood trees.
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No wonder the mycophilic Japanese named it maitake, the dancing mushroom – find a good flush of Grifola frondosa and you’ll surely be dancing too!But I’m not dancing yet – just crawling – and feeling rather pathetic when I suddenly spot a minuscule gray, fleshy nub, a pinprick of a mushroom dwarfed by the acorns strewn about the oak duff. It seems promising, cool to the touch and exuding tiny droplets of moisture, but it is too diminutive to know for sure. I make a mental note to return in a few days as I circle around to the other side of the tree, studying the soil with newfound confidence. With my eyes on, I notice what is undeniably a baby hen – about the size of a racquetball but already exhibiting the tight, brain-like appearance of a miniature maitake. Instantly I am in a better mood, and I bid farewell to the old oak, knowing I’ll be back in several days.It’s my lunch break and I don’t have time to linger, so I take the shortest route home.
I cut off-trail through mixed hardwoods and take off sprinting, struggling to refrain from inspecting each and every oak tree.But my mushroom mind will not let the hunt rest, and I stop to circle a grandfather oak with a basal scar, looking like prime maitake territory. I see nothing from the downhill side of the tree, but I stick my toes into the soil and crane my neck around the uphill side of the giant.
Before I can even process what I have seen, I have already reflexively yelped out for joy. There is a massive, mature hen, just inches from my face. If I had been any closer, it would have been in my mouth.Hens are here, and there is hardly a mushroom so cherished in this mycophilic household sauteed, grilled, braised, or pickled. If you do well in the next couple weeks, you may find a harvest to hold you through the New England winter.
After a rainy day at the office, I head straight for the woods to catch the last rays of daylight. It is already too dark to hunt, unless you know exactly where to look. Maitake is on my mind, and I am jumping from oak to oak in search of a hefty hen of the woods ( Grifola frondosa).I dodge a hailstorm of acorns, wishing I had worn a helmet as I zero in on a grandfather oak tree. It appears empty, but I crawl around the base, cobwebs in my curls, convinced that this tree will not let me down.As I pull back the freshly fallen leaves, a thriving microcosm of the forest ecosystem reveals itself. A juicy earthworm and a confused newt wiggle away from me, and as I taste a speck of loamy black soil, I am reminded of the quiet wonder of little things.The old oak was a giver, and soon it had revealed a tiny maitake, one that could not have been more than a day old. I admired the little hen’s tight, graceful form, before tucking it in beneath a blanket of leaves and walking softly out of the woods. My first maitake of the season would stay in the ground, as I know it meant more mature specimens would turn up in the light of day.Sure enough, 2015 already has proven to be my best maitake year since my formative foraging days in Ithaca.
Southern Vermont, it seems, is loaded with older oak trees, and the late September deluge coincided perfectly with the prime window for maitake fruitings. The nutritious and medicinal maitake epitomizes the umami flavor that makes mushrooms unique.We even have a family of maitake-loving insects that have taken residence in our home, after an enormous hen gifted to me by my father turned out to be laced with a labyrinth of boring beetles. I threw the maitake in our uncovered compost bowl on a dark evening, and within minutes the beetles had been summoned out of their food source and had swarmed our ceiling lamp. That night I feel asleep to a soundtrack of humming maitake beetles, reminding me of the abundance of autumn.
As many readers probably imagine, mushrooms are quite the common topic of conversation in our home. Ari and I often like to list our top five favorite wild mushrooms, and maitake ( Grifola frondosa), or, consistently makes the cut. However, I always forget how much I love maitake until I experience my first bite of the season.Ari’s desperate search for this season’s maitake while we were visiting friends and family in the Pioneer Valley. Life suddenly feels a little safer – no more screeching brakes while driving because we just passed a mature oak that Ari insisted might have had a hen of the woods roosting at its base.
Jenna holds a freshly plucked bouquet of maitake in downtown Northampton.Were it not for the neon pink, grotesquely phallic elegant stinkhorns, I never would have noticed the hen hiding in plain sight in downtown Northampton, MA. Just when I thought the 2012 season had come to a close, the foraging gods have rewarded me with a final, long awaited treat.Over the last six weeks I have fastidiously checked the base of every oak tree I could find, only to finally stumble upon a when I wasn’t even looking. Oddly enough, it was nestled at the base of an old silver maple. It is rare, but not unheard of, for hens to pop up on hardwoods other than oak, including locust and maple.
However, though I have found many-a-hen in past seasons, I have never seen one growing on any host other than oak.The pedestrians stared at me oddly, but that wasn’t going to stop me as I bent down to harvest the hen on Main Street. Usually I am very cautious about harvesting mushrooms in an urban setting, both because I don’t want to draw attention and because of the risk of soil contamination. However, this hen was set back from the road, and after six weeks of tireless hunting I wasn’t going to pass up this tender young specimen.We have already seen snow in the Green Mountains, but here in Western Massachusetts it is a balmy day and Old Man Winter seems to be far from the mushrooms’ minds. I guess I can’t turn off my yet!