Wandering back from a mushroom hike with John Ford of King Oyster mushrooms I walked near a stand of Oak and Chestnut trees in a low trafficked area in the Dandenong Ranges.
Some Lycoperdon had caught my eye and as I walked around I glimpsed a flash of yellow gold in the undergrowth. Upon investigation I noticed three rows of chanterelles!
The stand of trees was Oak and Chestnut – there was zero native species other than a few Prickly Currant Bushes.
I quickly realised that this might be the find of my mushroom hunting life! These chanterelles were yellow with an olive to brown dimple on the cap, strong chant veins that were slightly lighter in colour and importantly – a hollow stipe/stem. The sequence for this mushroom when run through BLASTn placed it somewhere between Cantharellus minor (a US and Japanese specied associated with Oaks) and Cantharellus albus (a Chinese chanterelle species) although it was LSU which may not be as specific.
More recently two Richards and a Jenny got in contact to report that they had found a chanterelle that looked identical to this one in native forest growing under Nothofagus in one case so its possible this may be a native species that moved onto Oak or Chestnut as a host. One photo on facebook looked identical in any case.
The smell was fruity, and in the later photos I have included the orange species which is our local native Cantharellus concinnus, the Victorian native chanterelle for comparison.
Taste I hear you ask? Excellent!
