golden chanterelle

silica gel

Summer’s currency whorled in the peat moss. Turmeric dancers. The type species, the golden standard. Both yolks and yokes are rooted in the bestial. There’s a certain wild joy in the washes where water goes to rest, and the crow flies over the white oak tree. Here, the blades are mere wrinkles; here, time slows and smells of apricot.

Latin: Cantharellus cibarius, roughly meaning culinary chalice.

Properties: The chanterelle is a cosmopolitan mushroom that occurs nearly worldwide; known as the pfifferling in Germany, the girolle in France and the gallinacci in Italy, it is beloved everywhere it occurs. It’s becoming clearer to science that there are many cryptic cibaroid species hiding within the “golden chanterelle” species complex. Golden chanterelles are one of the few mushrooms that have had no changes to their original latin binomial since it was assigned in the 1800’s. Like their illuminating star, Cantharellus sp. provide high amounts of Vitamin D and quicken the vision with carotenoids.

Companions: Chanterelles are ectomycorrhizal with numerous hardwoods and coniferous trees; in these alliances, the chanterelles and trees exchange nutrients that they can’t synthesize on their own. In the eastern United States, chanterelles associate heavily with Quercus species, but they also find kinship with the dark, witchy hemlock forests of New England. Other companions include: beech, birch, eastern white pine, balsam fir and sphagnum mosses. Care should be taken to avoid poison ivy, as they’re often in cohabitation.

Recipe: Chanterelle Vodka

Sound Design: Silica Gel