Has anyone found Chicken of the Woods this year?

[LynR6]

Hi everyone
I'm a new member from south Wiltshire - this site is a lot more interesting than Matchdotcom. I found a huge 'flock' of Chicken in the Woods in Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury today. I thought of trying some tomorrow (when I've checked out cooking suggestions) Hope this won't be my Last Post !!
I find fungi fascinating. I used to go for walks with my daughter when she was about eight looking for fungi to identify in Roger Phillips' book.
Lyn

[flaxton]

Make sure it is growing on broad leaved trees some growing on conifer especially taxus can be poisonous.

Mal

[Klaas Reißmann]

Hi everybody,

this is kind of interresting for me. In Germany we call Laetiporus sulfureus "Schwefelporling". Schwefel means sulfur and porling is a genus of funghi (family Porlinge - Polyporaceae). So it is obviously why it is called "Schwefelporling" in Germany. But do anyone have an idea why it is called "Chicken of the woods" in Britain?

Thanks a lot in advance
Klaas

[NickCantle]

Originally Posted by Klaas Reißmann

Hi everybody,

this is kind of interresting for me. In Germany we call Laetiporus sulfureus "Schwefelporling". Schwefel means sulfur and porling is a genus of funghi (family Porlinge - Polyporaceae). So it is obviously why it is called "Schwefelporling" in Germany. But do anyone have an idea why it is called "Chicken of the woods" in Britain?

Thanks a lot in advance
Klaas

Hi Klaas, welcome to WAB from across the ocean

Some books here call Laetiporus sulphureus 'Sulphur Polypore' which translates pretty closely to 'Schwefelporling'. It's probably more commonly known as Chicken of the woods for 1 or 2 reasons. The first reason is that people think it has the same consistency and texture as a piece of chicken flesh. Secondly, the colour of the 'Porling' () itself is yellow, rather reminiscent of a chicken's foot

Hope that helps a little and looking forward to reading your posts and seeing lots of nice German species

Nick

[LynR6]

Well I tried some fried this morning - not too impressed. It was slightly acidic, consistency 'like chicken!' and left my teeth with a rather rough feeling like after eating rhubarb or scones with too much baking soda! It wasn't on a conifer - not sure what the tree was but it had a very wide trunk and lots of small leaves, possibly Ash?

Lyn

[mushroomaniac]

I found plenty of them (L. sulphureus) here (in İstanbul) a couple of weeks ago. They were on old oak trees. I left some of them on the trees so that their spores would spread around. Yesterday I went to the woods again and saw that some of them dried and became too hard to eat but some of them were still soft enough so I got some soft ones to make soup. The soup tasted OK. I cooked some of them on the barbeque but the result was a disaster. However it tasted good with egss.

[Klaas Reißmann]

Hi there Nick,

thanks a lot for your explanations. Those helped a lot and gave me a big smile in my face. The two reasons sound very logically and can make one only smile.

Thanks again and a nice start into the new week.

Klaas