Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Vermont Bar Journal, Spring 2017, Volume 43, No. 1 | Page 10
Happiness
make sure that it is still fresh, and that it
is cooked, because mushrooms really need
to be cooked. In fact, morels actually, as
divine as morels are, they are poisonous
raw! So there are some great edibles that
are poisonous raw and on top of that, it is
much more nutritious to eat cooked wild
mushrooms because it breaks down the
cell wall and releases more nutrients.
JEB: I was not aware of that. I eat raw
button mushrooms in salad, but you men-
tioned that they are not real mushrooms.
ARM: They are very tame.
JEB: Tame, innocuous mushroom.
ARM: Actually, even those are mild-
ly carcinogenic, eating them raw in large
quantities over time, though nothing to
panic about.
JEB: Ok, so we have morels and puff-
balls, what are the most common mush-
rooms in Vermont that you find or that you
like to find?
ARM: Well, I love the hen of the woods
or maitake, which comes out in the fall and
it looks like a hen roosting at the base of
an oak tree. That was the first wild mush-
room that I ever found before I was even
confident eating them as a kid. I found a
hen of the woods under an oak tree on
my driveway and was pretty sure that was
10
what it was, and then 20 years later or so,
my dad went back to that same tree and
there it was, this hen of the woods in the
fall, fruiting again and since then, we have
been eating it from that tree every fall as it
comes back. When you find a good tree or
a good spot, it really can be a special treat
that will last you for decades in many cases.
That is why people covet the knowledge so
much of their spots and they are so pos-
sessive about their good spots. Maitake
means dancing mushroom in Japanese,
because it is exciting enough that it might
make you do a little dance to discover a
tree lined with maybe several hens when
each might be at least 5 pounds! So they
are massive and delicious gourmet mush-
rooms.
JEB: Now when you harvest it, do you
have to leave some so it comes back next
year, because I think that happens with mo-
rels, right? You cannot take them all.
ARM: Yes, that is a great question. It
is always really important to be mindful
of ethical wild harvest. The guidelines for
what is sustainable varies for each species;
some are more easily exhausted than oth-
ers but the general rule of thumb is that I
never pick more than half a patch. In the
case of maitake, if you saw a tree with sev-
eral of them, I would take just one or two
and also being careful not to disturb the
THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • SPRING 2017
soil. The maitake fruit has something called
the sclerotium which is an underground,
hardened mass of mycelium which is like a
dense energy reserve and you don’t want
to disturb that sclerotium when you harvest
maitake. The mushroom is just the fruit of
the organism, mycelium.
JEB: Is it like a root system of a plant? I
mean is that what is under there?
ARM: It is a little different because in the
case of a tree, the roots and the tree are all
the organism, the whole trunk is the organ-
ism, the branches are the organism, and in
the case of the mushroom, the mushroom
is really the fruit of the organism so when
you pick a mushroom, you are not actually
killing anything if you do it carefully. You are
just picking its fruit so it’s not like uproot-
ing a tree, but with that said, the spores
and the fruiting bodies are still very impor-
tant for genetic diversity and reproduction,
so that is why it is so important to leave at
least half the patch in the ground and to fa-
vor picking mature mushrooms.
JEB: That makes sense. Are there other
ones in Vermont that you particularly enjoy
finding and/or eating?
ARM: Oh yes. There are many. Right
here in Vermont I would say, even with-
in close proximity of Vermont Law School,
there are incredible mushrooms of many
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