The Mushroom at the End of the Cape
Matsutake (Tricholoma magnivelare)
Good morning, friends,
This week we’re opting for a treat of a mushroom, however finding them was a bit of a trick. A couple Sundays ago, the Cape Cod Mycological Society ventured out to the Cape Cod National Seashore in Wellfleet, MA to try and hunt down the coveted Matsutake (Tricholoma magnivelare).
The title of this newsletter is taken from Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, a book I got halfway through before throwing in the towel. Tsing provides a lot of information on both the mushroom and the foraging economies that pop up around it, but I found the prose a bit dense. A bit too academic. I believe I tried reading this in 2021, and I don’t think my brain was fully developed, so perhaps it’s worth a revisit. If that doesn’t take, there’s always What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake as World-Makers by Michael J. Hathaway.
Regardless, there’s enough cultural, ecological, and philosophical information on this mushroom to sustain multiple books, but let’s see if we can’t just hit the SparkNotes in this newsletter.
The Hunt
When we went with the Cape Cod Mycological Society, we parked at the Marconi NPS Headquarters and just fanned out in the woods around there. I don’t think I’m divulging any sort of secret spot, as that’s the main parking lot in the area and people had clearly been there before us. We found as many butt ends of mushrooms that had already been harvested as we did healthy mushrooms.
Nonetheless, people still found plenty of Matsutakes and other edible mushrooms (particularly Leccinum). Well, except for me. The only Matsutake I found was next to one that had already been harvested, and made neither a good photo nor a fun story for the blog. I knew I had to give it another go, and fortunately, Ciara was a good sport as I dragged her back out there later in the week “so she could find them”.
Matsutake have a particular growth habit and form what are called ‘mushrumps’ (mushroom humps). They project ever so slightly out of the ground, but the caps tend to stay covered by the needle duff. Unfortunately, so do most of the mushrooms that grow in this environment at this time of the year. Not only do you have to decipher these undulations on the forest floor, but the majority of the time you unearth one of these mushrumps, you’re just disturbing a Cortinarius or a Russula. It took about half an hour of unearthing these subterranean mushrooms before we finally hit paydirt.
The ‘mushrump’ morphology does bring up the question, though” if the object of these mushrooms is to release their spores and distribute them into new habitat, why do they barely project above the ground? Nathan’s hypothesis was the needle duff kept the humidity high as the mushroom developed, and with age some of these mushrooms do break through the needle duff where their spores can finally get caught in the wind.
Cultural Significance
In Japan, Matsutakes carry high cultural and ceremonial significance. Traditionally they were eaten by nobility, and they still carry that distinction culturally. Unfortunately in the late ‘70s and into the ‘80s, Matsutake foraging in Japan fell into decline for a variety of reasons: everything from acid rain to the resurgence of dominant hardwood forests as the primary heat source transitioned from wood to fossil fuel.
Now, an entire economy exists in the Pacific Northwest exists around foraging and delivering these mushrooms to Japan where, earlier in the month, the first eight Matsutake of the year were sold for 850,000 yen ($5,500). While that price might’ve been a bit ceremonial, an instance where the highest bidder wanted to show off to their peers (a ‘flex’, as the kids say) at the opening auction, it gives you an idea of the regard in which these mushrooms are held.
I’m not the most culinarily inclined, but Nathan gave me a simple recipe with which to enjoy these mushrooms. The primary reason these mushrooms are so highly coveted is due to their piney, cinnamon-like aroma. It’s hard to describe but it’s lightly sweet with a sharp fungal, almost chemical-like kick. The texture is also quite substantial as far as mushrooms go which makes them ideal for cooking.
I sliced them thin, sautéed them in avocado oil, and then served them over white rice. I also cooked a larger portion of them in a dry fry (no oil in the pan) to let them sweat out some liquid before adding soy sauce and oil. Nothing revolutionary, but there are plenty of recipes online for those looking for something more elaborate.
Additionally, a couple of studies found that T. magnivelare extracts expedited wound healing in mice, and compounds in the mushroom also demonstrated anticancer potential in vitro (References 3 & 4). An added bonus to complement the taste and texture.
Etymology
The genus name Tricholoma comes from the Greek trikhós, which means ‘hair’, and lôma, which means “fringe”. I imagine “hairy fringe” refers to the membrane left on the margin of the gills by species in the genus, because these mushrooms aren’t overly hairy.
The species epithet comes from the Latin magnus, which means ‘great’, and velare which means ‘to cloak’. This ‘great cloak’ refers to the prominent partial veil, the membrane that attaches from the stipe to the edge of the cap and protects the gills when young.
Ecology
The fungus is mycorrhizal and forms an association with conifer trees across the northern hemisphere (the other common name for the fungus is "pine mushroom"). While the traditional Japanese species is recognized as Tricholoma matsutake, a 2017 study found that North America has three distinct species of Matsutake: T. magnivelare in the east, T. murrillianum in the west, and T. mesoamericanum in Mexico.
I was also relieved to find out that there is an additional, lesser-reported Matsutake in eastern North America named T. dulciolens (the species seems to be a little darker in color than T. magnivelare), so there’s another name I can forget.
Further, there are also other Tricholoma species (like Tricholoma focale and Tricholoma caligatum) which look very similar to Matsutake, but have darker colors and don’t have the characteristic smell. The tan cap with subtle striations became a reliable characteristic to distinguish real Matsutake from the oranges, reds, and browns of look-alikes.
We were specifically looking for our Matsutakes in pitch pine barrens (Pinus rigida) where bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) grew on the ground. There might be some additional mycorrhizal association with the bearberry, a little menage-a-trois in the soil situation, but I wasn’t able to substantiate that in my research. What I did find was that the fungus needs a particular type of soil to exist: podzol.
Podzol, aka spodosol, is the third layer of soil tucked beneath the needle duff and humus (organic material). The podzol consists of acidic, sandy soil that is laden with iron and aluminum, and it is a characteristic of a lot of coniferous forests. At one point it was believed that Matsutakes didn’t grow in the northeast, but now the understanding is that they can be found in coniferous environments across the northeast — particularly in Maine, Cape Cod, and the Adirondacks (where they grow with hemlock trees).
Upcoming Walks
10AM 11/1 CCMS Walk at Punkhorn Parklands
10 AM 11/7 Mushroom Walk with Harwich Conservation Trust
We found Deathcap (Amanita phalloides) mushrooms on the CCMS walk this past weekend. Those would’ve been seasonally appropriate for this edition, had I had my wits about me, but perhaps we’ll give them the candy treatment and sell them at a steep discount next Monday after the holiday.
Have a spooky Halloween,
Aubrey
References:
Kuo, M. (2023, January). Tricholoma magnivelare. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/tricholoma_magnivelare.html
Zhu W, Chen Y, Qu K, Lai C, Lu Z, Yang F, Ju T, Wang Z. Effects of Tricholoma matsutake (Agaricomycetes) Extracts on Promoting Proliferation of HaCaT Cells and Accelerating Mice Wound Healing. Int J Med Mushrooms. 2021;23(9):45-53. doi: 10.1615/IntJMedMushrooms.2021039854. PMID: 34591397.
Zhou Y, El-Seedi HR, Xu B. Insights into health promoting effects and myochemical profiles of pine mushroom Tricholoma matsutake. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2023;63(22):5698-5723. doi: 10.1080/10408398.2021.2023857. Epub 2022 Jan 5. PMID: 34985354.
https://thebreakthrough.org/journal/no-17-summer-2022/matsutakes-journeys
Trudell, Steven & Xu, Jianping & Justo, Alfredo & Saar, Irja & Cifuentes, Joaquin. (2017). North American matsutake: Names clarified and a new species described. Mycologia. 109. 379-390. 10.1080/00275514.2017.1326780.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/62483-Tricholoma-magnivelare
I’m excited to learn matsutakes are in the east coast! “Mushroom at the End of the World” is a bit dense, but I found it worth the effort. What promoted Matsutakes in the North West was logging of old growth forests. The pines that were replanted were fast growing and made an ideal environment for the mushrooms. There’s lots of fascinating sociological, political, economic, and racial issues around the intense foraging that has arisen to meet the Japanese demand. Well worth a read.