[pct-l] Dried meats and Cheese on Trail

[Scott Williams]

Hey MendoRider,
We were in Colorado in mountain spring and early summer and porcini is
usually a fall mushroom so we didn't hit mountain fall till the Winds.
 They grow all over the Colorado Rockies, but later in the year.  They are
a mycorrhizal mushroom that grows primarily with pines.  If you've got a
pine forest then you've got a good chance you've got porcini.  They produce
nutrients for the host tree and it provides sugars for the mushroom.  The
opposite of a parasitic relationship. Once you find an area that produces,
you've found a "mother tree" and can revisit it for the rest of your life
at the right season.  The mushroom plant underground can be as old as the
tree.  I often pick chanterelles beneath 4 and 500 year old oaks and wonder
about the age of the mycelium producing them.  Chanterelles are mycorrhizal
with oaks, manzanita, huckleberries and poison oak.

Shroomer