Mushrooms are called woody due to the main feature - they are introduced into the bark of a dead or living tree and decompose it through special enzymes. Destroying cellulose and other polysaccharides, they use them for their own development and growth. They are part of the xylotroph group.
There are edible and inedible species of these fungi studied by the science of mycology. Edible parts are useful for humans, contain proteins, vitamins of groups B and C, iron, phosphorus and calcium. "Muer" - this is the Chinese name for the tree mushroom, long and often used in dishes of Pan-Asian cuisine.
Features of wood mushrooms
Many types of tree mushrooms act as forest orderlies, as they are bred on weakened trees and help the natural selection of quality species. The well-known representatives of such "orderlies", for example, are honey mushrooms, beautifully growing on stumps by a large family and beckoning mushroom hunters with a spicy aroma. In addition, they are delicious, crispy, especially loved by gourmets in a marinated form.
We recommend reading the article about honey agarics and how to collect them and where on our portal.
But there are mushrooms that are completely unlike traditional ones; they have neither a hat nor a leg. They are qualified and recognized by their form and appearance, which reminds us of familiar things in everyday life. It never occurred to anyone to collect them and taste them, so the taste qualities of these eccentric specimens are not known for certain.
Such xylotrophs can be distinguished by the description of their appearance:
- Meat pieces (Askokorin meat);
- Resin in the form of a drop (Glandular excision);
- Bubble foam; Dacrimitses disappearing;
- Coral, sponge (Kalocera).
Even among fungi, there are parasites that eat their relatives. For example, sulfur-yellow hypokrey, which feeds on colonies of exidium or tremor.
Particularly dangerous parasites for the forest include the northern climacodon, a representative of the Trutovik subspecies. Through cracks and cuts, it penetrates the body of a healthy tree and completely destroys it in 4 years.
Gardeners and park workers should be wary of such parasites, because they can completely destroy the garden.
Types of Wood Mushrooms
Mushroom hunters pay attention to outwardly unusual species found in the forest on the trunks of rotted or diseased trees, fallen trees. In mid-summer and autumn, you can find adults of the most interesting mushrooms, the description of which is presented below.
Ascocorine meat
The name was given because the fruit body resembles pieces of meat of pink-purple hues with plates no more than a centimeter combined over one saucer. Most often found on birch stumps. It has no pronounced aroma. The unsightly appearance discourages mushroom gourmets, so its taste is unknown.
Biercandera
Belongs to the family of polypore, differs in tape growth for one year. A ripe mushroom of dark brown color resembles a hatband of 3 cm in size. The flesh is fragile, gray in color, odorless. A thin spore-bearing layer with a clear boundary separates the body of the fungus from the brown oily cap, as if always wet and grayish at the ends.
Distributed on dead wood, deadwood. It tastes like an ordinary tinder fungus.
Oyster mushroom
Oyster mushrooms quickly broke into our lives, greatly facilitating the preparation of many dishes with rare species of wood mushrooms. Fast-growing in an artificial environment, having a wonderful aroma and good taste, they have become undoubted sales leaders. Instances cultivated on mushroom farms are not comparable in taste with wild varieties. They grow in large families on the trunks of living and dead deciduous fruit trees.
You need to look for them in the spring and autumn in the Crimea.
The fruit body consists of a long elastic leg and a dull hat. Oyster mushrooms have a diverse palette of colors - from pale gray to orange, and all of them are edible and tasty.
Hypokrey
Sulfur yellow hypocrea is an inedible parasite fungus that feeds on relatives of the Drozhozhok family (most often the glandular excision). Accordingly, the seasons and places of growth of this species coincide with their "victims".
Appearing on the body of the yeast, hypokrey grows with several yellow spots, which then merge into one surface. It forms a large golden spot on the body of a tree mushroom with black dots - spore-forming fruit bodies. It resembles a dense, uneven sponge with a size of 1 to 15 cm.
Ram mushroom
This fast-growing fungus from the tinder family is also called Curly Grifola. In our country, it is rare, only in deciduous forests on old logs and stumps. Such mushrooms weighing 9-10 kg were found in nature.
Many of the thin legs of a ram mushroom turn into brown hats with gray and greenish shades along the wavy edges. The light fruit body has useful properties and smells pleasantly like nuts.
For these properties, the mushroom has been widely used in cooking and has become the medicinal basis of folk recipes for the treatment of pulmonary diseases.
Dacrimitses
Rarely enough small, up to 0.5 cm, oval yellow mushroom. He loves water, dampness and decaying stumps of conifers, so in dry weather he hides in the bark of a fallen tree, as if spreading, it becomes flat.
Due to its yellow hue and structure, it looks like bubbles of polyurethane foam scattered with small drops on a tree. The body of dacrimitses has neither taste nor aroma. It is inedible, but not toxic.
Kalocera sticky
Usually settles in the forest on rotten wood and occupies this place completely, that is, other mushrooms will not grow here already.
Kalocera strongly resembles bright yellow coral, sometimes orange. Reaching a length of 6 cm, the horn-shaped processes spliced at the base and "create" a bouquet. Such formations parasitize on rotten wood and breed all summer.
Each rubber to the touch mushroom has 2-3 sharp branched tips.
This species was not classified as edible or poisonous due to its rarity.
Chinese mushroom muer
In the name of this delicious mushroom lies the main place of growth - China, but sometimes it can be found in the eastern forests of Russia. It grows mainly on the trunks of living trees, preferably alder.
Brown, almost black, with a thin body that resembles an ear. Due to the delicate jelly, slightly crisp texture and sweet with a smoke taste, Muer has found wide application in the culinary of China, Japan, Vietnam and Thailand.
Climacodon North
You can call him a real forest nurse. In the middle of summer, he settles on old and diseased deciduous trees and destroys them in a couple of years. Belongs to the family of polypore and looks like a very typical representative of these mushrooms.
A light yellow porous body and slightly brown menopause hats with a radius of up to 15 cm form a multi-tiered nice structure. In the places of formation, the spore has soft spines - a rather rare occurrence for such rocks.
His taste and smell are unpleasant, so this instance does not have experience in cooking and pharmaceuticals.
Honey agaric
The edible mushroom, familiar in appearance, taste and color to every person, is original in that it can be grown in an ordinary city apartment. And how, read on our website!) But the taste value of the found natural specimens growing on stumps and old deciduous trees is much higher.
They are found in all forests of Russia, grow in large families - up to 50 pale gray legs and gray-brown hats with one base.
Tinder fungus
There are many varieties of tinder fungus - this is one of the most popular objects of study in mycology. Its habitats are broad-leaved forests and parks, especially with elms.
Yellow caps with a diameter of 15 cm and brown legs 10 cm long are covered with brown scales. Those who like to cook these mushrooms need to collect only young specimens with dense, moist pulp, and up to three crops can be harvested during the summer and autumn.
Chaga
Inedible mushroom, the medicinal properties of which extol it into the category of the best of its kind medicinal xylotrophs. Dark brown or light gray lamellar semicircular growths on birch trunks have a dense, brittle structure and putrefactive odor.
Biologically active substances and fiber in the fruit body of the chaga provide folk medicine with a substrate for the preparation of medicinal decoctions and infusions, teas and powders. As long as birch groves exist in Russia, we will be able to use the unique beneficial properties of the fungus for the benefit of human health.
Golden flake (royal honey agaric)
Most often you can find on the trunks of weakened and dead poplars, birches, alders. Yellow-golden hats with a diameter of up to 20 cm on a thin long leg are covered with brown scales.
Young specimens appearing in the middle of summer are often confused with honey mushrooms. But to taste, this mushroom significantly loses to well-known relatives, therefore, they do not use it as an independent dish.
He has an inedible, but not toxic close relative - poplar flake (pictured below).
Read more in the article golden flake.
Shiitake
Edible japanese forest, imperial mushroom or lentinula - such names are found in this famous tree representative studied by mycology.
Features:
- fibrous leg;
- brown round hat with brightened plates;
- flakes on dry skin.
It grows most often on oak. Delicious flesh, giving peppercorns, as well as the healing properties of the species are widespread in cooking and medicine.
Iron gland
Xylotroph from the Drozhalok family is difficult to describe externally, since it often changes its shape, depending on climatic conditions. It resembles tar drops of black color and with its large family envelops the entire trunk of young twigs growing on the remains of wood. The pulp of the fruiting body is jelly-like, has no taste and aroma properties, therefore it does not represent value in the kitchen.
The benefits and harms of wood mushrooms
The benefits of edible species of wood mushrooms are scientifically proven. They have absolutely no fat. Their main useful components are:
- vegetable protein;
- vitamins C, B, especially a lot of B3;
- Trace elements calcium, phosphorus, iron.
In such types of mushrooms as tinder fungus, shiitake, chaga, not culinary, but pharmaceutical properties prevail. Of these, various substances and mixtures are prepared that can treat the symptoms of certain diseases:
- lack of iron in the blood;
- high blood pressure;
- high acidity of the stomach;
- reduced immunity.
Wood mushrooms can be considered harmful only because they spread widely and quickly on healthy trees in human-cultivated areas - gardens, parks, artificial forests. Getting on the bark of the damaged area of a healthy trunk, spores of fungi multiply rapidly and destroy it in just a few years.
If damaged wood or frostbitten wood is treated with garden varieties in time, this danger will disappear.
Mr. Dachnik recommends: wood mushrooms - useful properties, use in cooking
The medicinal properties of the tree fungus Chaga birch are famous - teas, decoctions of it have a powerful immunostimulating and tonic effect.
Planting mushrooms on a farm has become a profitable business and now we often see on sale delicious and nutritious oyster mushrooms, which also belong to wood. In nature, they are yellow, greenish and other shades and grow in a large family. Forest species are much more fragrant than their relatives, bred artificially. A big plus can be considered that they do not have poisonous doubles.
Wood ears, as mushrooms are called because of their resemblance to the auricle, are very popular in oriental dishes. However, they are rarely cooked as an independent dish, since they have no special aroma and pronounced taste. Mushrooms are good as a side dish in combination with meat, giving it a subtle aroma of smoke. The crisp and firm texture is palatable and nutritious, especially well seasoned.
Undoubtedly, wood mushrooms have taken a worthy place in human nutrition: it is not for nothing that we began to meet them more often on supermarket shelves, thereby enriching the diet with useful and nutritious protein products.
