My favourite mushroom: Chicken of the Woods

A tree oozing Chicken of the Woods

I have to talk more about my favourite mushroom.

Chicken of the Woods: it's the one I obsessed over from the moment I understood it existed; I dreamed about finding it; talked about it constantly.

This summer, I naively went foraging in the hope of bringing home a hoard of the stuff; became despondent after gathering but two boletes and a shrunken, fetid earthball.

Then, like a woman dying of thirst in the desert, just as I gave up hope, saw a flash of coral-shaped yellow in the distance growing at the stump of a tree. 

Not believing my eyes, I kept tramping on...

Finding my first bounty of the unearthly-looking Chicken of the Woods, that at first sight looks like that ungodly foamy industrial wall-filler stuff, oozing out of a tree, was the most exciting moment of my foraging life so far.

I found it in the forests of Meanwood, Leeds, in late summer, with my friend Laura. We cut it from the base of the tree and found a branch long enough to knock another lump from higher up the old tree. 

We cycled home, slowed down with the pure weight of it.

The wonderfully-named fungi (for a long time my friend thought I was talking about actual chickens that happened to be in the woods) is the perfect mushroom for the new forager. 

It's so easy to identify and there's no risk of confusing it with anything else. 

And it tastes delicious! (More on that to come in my next post...)