The latin name for my favorite mushroom is Grifola Frondosa, also known as hen of the woods or maitake. I’ve blogged about it before because I love it so much.

Too Late For Grifola Frondosa?

The conditions for finding this mushroom in-the-wild are cooler evenings, some rain and a very large oak tree.

Years ago, Thaddeus found a perfect oak tree with grifola growing around the base of it. We go back to the same tree every year and most years, there are five to seven large groups of this wonderful mushroom. We usually end up taking the two healthiest and leave the remainder to feed on the now-dying oak tree. This year we got to our grifola tree and we were at least a week too late. They were there, but completely dried up and deteriorated. I was bummed.

We ended up buying a chef’s sampler of mushrooms at Costco that we like.

It includes a variety of cultivated mushrooms, including some grifola (there wasn’t much…the grifola is under the large mushroom cap in the upper-left part of the package in this photo).

Later that week, we were picking up a friend to go out to dinner. He asked Thaddeus to check a mushroom growing on a tree in his yard. It was an old, deteriorated head of grifola (on an large oak tree). And right next to it, was a smaller, non-deteriorated head of the same mushroom. He let us take it and we were thrilled (it’s the mushroom in the feature photo today). It wasn’t huge, but it was absolutely delicious.

It was also very encouraging to have another grifola tree we can add to our visits for future years.

Current Knitting

I’ve started work on a lengthwise-knit, garter-stripe scarf using two colorful yarns.

It’s a simple and easy knit that requires no attention at all. And I’m loving the color combination so far. It’s only about 10 rows so far. But on 340 stitches, that’s still 3,400 stitches made since Monday.