(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - All right.

So we are sitt.. Can you see it?

So it is a mycorrhizal mushroom, which means that it is helping everything around it, the grasses, the plants, the trees by exchanging nutrients back and forth.

So they're benefiting one another.

This little guy here, commonly called old man of the woods, and we'll go ahead and post the scientific name, but it is a member of the Boletaceae family.

That means there are no gills on the underside of this cap.

It will have pores, and it drops kind of a brownish blackish spore print, which is helpful when you're trying to ID a mushroom.

It's not super sought after, but it is edible.

People either really, really don't like it or they just think it's okay.

I've never heard anybody rant and rave about old man of the woods.

But you know what?

It's doing a good service here in .. and if you were in a pinch and needed to, it is something that is edible that would help sustain you.

These fun mushrooms can get pretty large.

We're gonna walk by here a week from now, it's gonna be much bigger.

Still darker in shading, but it's gonna look a little bit different.

And so getting to know the mushrooms in their different stages of growth is really helpful if you're planning to consume mushrooms.

(upbeat music) So this is a very young old man of the woods and you can see it has a porous surface.

There are no gills, and it's those pores that are gonna drop if you were to cut the cap off and put it on paper.

So again, that's one way you know that you have an old man of the woods, but also these are kind of unmistakable.

They're kind of like scruffy, scrappy shaggy looking up on top.

And then their stems are basically the same color as the cap.

And everything changes a little bit as they age and grow.

But again, get to know them at their different stages.

I think that these taste maybe bland to slightly nutty, if that makes sense.

And I always love how people describe mushrooms and their flavors 'cause sometimes there are just no words.

It's helpful to like mix it maybe with some other mushrooms.

There's not a whole lot of taste to it.

So it's gonna pick up whatever the flavors of whatever you're cooking.

This little guy, old man of the woods, fun mushroom to stumble on and give it a try.