Canaan Valley, WV is a beautiful land of waterfalls, bogs, old forests with hemlock, pine, red spruce, birch, hardwood and balsalm fir. Much of the forest was replanted by the CCC.
I intend to be rather secretive about the exact locations I visited that day, but they included a cranberry bog, which has very few cranberries this year due to a May freeze, some land with mostly hemlocks and other conifers. I found a few Leccinum and other boletes, but pickings were slim. It began to rain, so I took refuge in a local coffee house. There I was given a few suggestions by the owners, and off I went.
I did not find much, so I stopped at the office of the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge. It was closed, but as I was looking at the map, an employee came out and asked me if she could help. I explained what I was looking for, and she gave me a few suggestions. She also said I should talk to the local mushroom expert, Chip Chase, and told me where he lived.
I checked out one area and found a few chanterelles, but not what I was looking for. Following her directions, I drove up to a house and found Chip Chase in the yard. He showed me some of his recent finds, including one that was not B. edulis, but was certainly a similar species. After a long discussion about mushrooms and who we know in the fungi fraternity, he called his friend Curtis, who lives in an area with fir trees, planted by the CCC in the 1930′s, in a reforestation effort that has paid off over the decades.
Curtis showed me where he found what he described as Boletus edulis. There was only one left in a rather bad state of decay. He also gave me a piece of chaga from a birch tree. This rates a separate post.
Chip, Curtis and I searched a nearby forest for about an hour, and found a few boletes, but no edulis. Upon our return to Curtis’ house, he gave me a baggie of dried boletes. Sure smelled like edulis to me, but I haven’t eaten them yet.
My conclusion after my days of searching: while Boletus edulis is quite often associated with Amanita muscaria, despite the fact that there was no muscaria to be found, the mushrooms described by Chip and Curtis as Boletus edulis are that if you are a species “lumper.” If you are a “splitter,” perhaps they are not. But they are the closest I have seento this species in the East other than one associated with pine that I have not collected in well over a decade.
Note: This post is subject to modification if and when Chip and Curtis tell me it is not completely accurate.
Eatmore T.
Amanita caesarea
Leccinum. I’m not sure of the species and it really doesn’t matter. It’s edible, and is probably best dried and reconstituted.
Chip Chase with his noble bolete. The closest thing to a Boletus edulis I saw on the entire trip, not counting the one that was too far gone to study, or the dried mushrooms given to me by Curtis.
