Winter Mushrooms: Late Fall Oysters

Sarcomyxa serotina

This cousin of the more popular oyster mushroom is darker in cap color, presenting as olive green, brown, or even purple. This find was very purple with undertones of green.

Its gills can be whitish to ochre yellow/orange, and the stalk, if present, is also orangey.

Like all Oyster variants, it grows as shell to fan-shaped shelves, always growing directly out of wood. The Late Fall Oyster prefers hardwoods like birch, beech, alder, willow, and maple. This tree was downed, but based on the surrounding leaves, I'd guess it was maple.

In wet weather, the cap can be slimy, as seen above, and it dries to a sticky texture that persists for a couple of days, even when stored at room temperature.

The flesh is quite firm, and the specimen I broke off from this bunch stayed firm and bouncy in my pocket for two whole days!

Most of the resources I consulted called this mushroom edible but bitter and tough. Buck McAdoo's Profiles of Northwest Fungi indicates the bitterness can be eliminated by extended cooking. There were too few in my find to harvest for eating, fingers crossed I run across a more abundant crop in the future.

There is an overwhelming amount of information about each mushroom available, but typically only a handful of factors need to be considered to safely identify them for edibility.

This little find inspired me to create this new comparison table focused on the attributes necessary for foraging Oyster mushrooms.