My Big Wildcrafting Triumph

Wildcrafting is the practice of harvesting uncultivated plants from their natural or "wild" habitat. I provide this definition because I was not familiar with the word before moving to Oregon. I guess I was wildcrafting blackberries all summer, but to tell the truth my ambitions did not extend much beyond that. This changed today.

Yesterday I went for a walk in Willamette Park along the river in the early morning fog. After several days of solid rain, the sun had finally come out the day before, and more clear days were in store. Passing a large moss-covered oak tree, I noticed, about nine or ten feet up the shady side of the trunk where a large branch had been removed, a white, hemispheric mass about the size of my head. Its surface was not smooth but stranded in a way that looked familiar.

Over the past few months, Leela and I had been experimenting with various mushrooms, mostly obtained from the local farmers' market. It seems our area is rich in mushroom varieties. One of the varieties obtained from the market that we'd liked very much was the lion's mane, which is what I thought I'd seen in the tree. The ones we'd bought had been cultivated, though, and the one wildcrafter who sells at the market never had lion's mane. Today I told the wildcrafter what I'd seen, and she became very excited. She confirmed that it probably was a lion's mane, because nothing else looks quite like it. She said she'd never found one in the wild. She wanted to know where it was. She wanted me to take a picture.

Leela and I promptly pedaled our bikes out to the site. It was still there. We'd brought a stick to try to knock it down, but that crude tactic proved unnecessary. I hoisted Leela up on my shoulder, and she was able to retrieve it. It was incredibly heavy -- maybe five pounds. It had absorbed a lot of water. I put it in a sack and carried it in my pannier back to the farmers' market, which was still in progress. I wanted the wildcrafter there to confirm what it was before we ingested it. She declared it "a magnificent specimen" and wanted to hold it. I allowed her to do so. She said mushroom gatherers tend to miss them, because they're always looking down. It took an amateur to find this thing.
At home I cleaned it (you're not supposed to wash mushrooms, just brush them off, I've learned), sliced it, and sauteed it with olive oil, a little butter, garlic, and some red wine at the end. Of course the sauteing brought out great quantities of moisture. The aroma is fantastic -- nutty, buttery, and kind of vanillaish. We ate it with rice, toasted walnuts, and salad. We could only find one neighbor to share it with on the spur of the moment. Even so, there was enough left for two more generous meals for Leela and me.
A little searching on the Web, turns up lots of pictures and info about lion's mane (Hericium erinaceus). Wikipedia has a nice picture of it growing on the tree (mine looked even better on the tree, but we were too excited about getting it down to take a picture first). It's valued for its medicinal properties as well as its culinary charms (there's evidence of anti-dementia effects and the ability to stimulate nerve growth). One site said it's highly prized in Chinese medicine, and at one time could only be eaten by the emperor -- that's me.