Hericium coral

Hericium grows on the undersides of fallen trees and sometimes on stumps. Often the mushroom itself is not visible, and its presence must be deduced. There are several ways to do this.

One favorite technique of mine is to walk on the fallen logs, looking down at the place where the sides of the log meet the ground. And there it is on the leaves, patches of white that look like scatterings of ash or flour, some of the bigger areas look like somebody has been busy with a can of white spray paint. This is the spore print of our prey.

Brushing the leaves away, we find Hericium corralloides, or his cousin H. ramosum, twining their way along the crawlspace under the fallen log, and sometimes at the end of the log. There is an element of excitement hunting these babies. Many times I've had to reach far under a dark and forbidding crevasse to pull out the viney webs of fruit these fungi produce, braving the creepy-crawlies that hide there.

Members of the Hericium genus are widespread. I first found H. abietis on a conifer log up the Bitterroot mountains, where I happened across a specimen while out on an early-season foray for Boletes. Another time I found them when canoeing in northern Minnesota, once at the edge of Yellowstone Park just before the first freeze, and to my surprise I also found Hericium erinaceous growing on live oak at a rest stop in southern Indiana and on living oak trees in the Russian Far East in September.