2013 Chanterelle

[Earthmom]

Hi ya fellow shroomers! Sorry I haven't been on for a while but just busy...waiting for the chants to mature. Well, they've matured and they are HOLLOW! Bugs! The chants down here in the south are completely infested with bugs at the button stage. They started here at the beginning of July and the couple buttons I found then were already buggy but I held out hope that would not continue. It continued. I went to patch of chants last night and they were ALL worthless! Ugh! My theory is that because the season is behind this year, combined with a lot of rain/moisture, the bugs were abundant and laid eggs anywhere and everywhere they could. I hope that means the August chants will not be buggy but who knows... On a brighter note, the cinnabars and mini-chants are coming up in good numbers and they are basically too thin for bugs and are in great shape. I was up north last weekend with the WMS (Wisconsin Mycological Society) and the chants had just started. The lobsters were not even out yet (well, I think about 5 tiny ones were found). A very late year indeed! I know people are finding black trumpets and have been since the beginning of July but now with this rain they should be all over the place next week or so.

[aaron]

The majority of chanterelles I'm finding in SE WI are healthy with few critter tunnels, especially the ones growing mostly under leaf litter. Finding decent amounts but I wouldn't really call it a banner season.

[patrick]

I'm finding good numbers up in the Wausau area, but they're crazy buggy. I've never seen them like this before!

[cisco]

I agree Patrick. They're starting to come on strong in the north, but really buggy. Most years you can let the little ones grow a bit, but not this year.

[aaron]

I should be thrilled about finding loads of Chanterelles, although mostly buggy, but it would be nice to have a little more variety of summer mushrooms. The boletes, oysters, hedgehogs and trumpets haven't been plentiful lately. Another factor stealing some of the excitement out of the Chanterelle hunt is knowing we have no freezer space left for long term storage. The only thing we can do with them now is consume fresh, give away or dehydrate.

[ec rob]

I found 7 chants in Polk County yesterday, I wasn't really looking for them, just happened upon them while i was out fishing. I checked my in-laws' land on Friday and found one solitary chant where I have found dozens in years past. Now that i live a few miles from their place, i have been checking regularly over the summer, hopefully there are more to come.

I have been finding boletes of all sorts up here, tons of big brown blue staining ones with yellow pores (didn't eat.) I also found some really nice looking "birch boletes" - the big orange/brown capped scaber stalks that make some people sick - i didn't eat those either. I did eat a couple of Suillus Granulatus that i found - the funky texture is not my favorite. The neighborhood is full of ash trees, so we have tons of those gyrodon merulioides everywhere, even in my yard, along with a flush of suillus americanus. (haven't eaten either of those.) So, anyway, that's my report from Polk County, lots of mushrooms around, just haven't found too many i want to eat so far this summer.