V OMPHALIN ISSN 1925-1858 Vol. III, No 11 Newsletter of Nov. 15, 2012 OMPHALINA OMPHALINA is the lackadaisical newsletter of Foray Newfoundland & Labrador. There is no schedule of publications, no promise to appear again. Its primary purpose is to serve as a conduit of information to registrants of the upcoming foray and secondarily as a communications tool with members. Issues of OMPHALINA are archived in: is an amateur, volunteer-run, community, Library and Archives Canada’s Electronic Collection <http://epe. not-for-profi t organization with a mission to lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/300/omphalina/index.html>, and organize enjoyable and informative amateur Centre for Newfoundland Studies, Queen Elizabeth II Library, mushroom forays in Newfoundland and where a copy is also printed and archived <http://collections. mun.ca/cdm4/description.php?phpReturn=typeListing.php&id= Labrador and disseminate the knowledge 162>. gained. The content is neither discussed nor approved by the Board of Directors. Therefore, opinions Webpage: www.nlmushrooms.ca expressed do not represent the views of the Board, the Corporation, the partners, the sponsors, or the members. Opinions are solely those of the authors ADDRESS and uncredited opinions solely those of the Editor. Foray Newfoundland & Labrador 21 Pond Rd. Please address comments, complaints and contribu- Rocky Harbour NL tions to the largely self-appointed Editor, Andrus Voitk: A0K 4N0 seened AT gmail DOT com, CANADA E-mail: info AT nlmushrooms DOT ca … who eagerly invites contributions to OMPHALINA, deal- ing with any aspect even remotely related to mushrooms. Authors are guaranteed instant fame—fortune to follow. BOARD OF DIRECTORS CONSULTANTS Authors retain copyright to published material, and submis- sion indicates permission to publish, subject to the usual editorial decisions. Issues are freely available to the public Michael Burzynski on the FNL website. Because content is protected by authors’ copyright, editors of other publications wishing to use any PRESIDENT material, should ask fi rst. Geoff Thurlow COVER TREASURER MYCOLOGICAL Faye Murrin Russula paludosa, photographed along the Labrador Dave Malloch Straits, Aug 15, 2008. The red mushroom or redcap SECRETARY NB MUSEUM of the settlers along the Labrador coast and the Great Andrus Voitk Northern Peninsula was regularly collected and Past PRESIDENT AUDITOR eaten with enjoyment and gusto in most northern Rick Squire Randy Batten communities among an otherwise mycophobic ERNST & YOUNG Jim Cornish population. A few older people still eat it, but for the most part it is now a fond reminiscence of something Jamie Graham LEGAL COUNSEL really good that nan used to make. Tina Leonard Andrew May BROTHERS & BURDEN “It was so good. If I only had paid attention to what Anne Marceau she told me. I wouldn’t dare pick anything now, but Maria Voitk I still remember how we used to look forward to Marian Wissink eating the red mushroom.” Quote from a grandson of the Labrador coast. OMPHALINA V Vol. III, No 11 OMPHALIN ISSN 1925-1858 Nov. 15, 2012 CONTENT Editor’s comments ................................. 2 The red mushroom in Labrador Robin McGrath .................................. 3 The fi rst ever Mushroom Foray at Goose! Betty Anne Fequet ......................... 5 Collecting edibles Maria Voitk ..................................... 8 The species list Andrus Voitk ....................................... 10 Gyromitra ambigua Andrus Voitk ....................................... 12 Amanita wellsii Andrus Voitk ....................................... 14 Mushroom paté Robin McGrath ................................... 15 Return of Vikings ..................................... 16 The saga Andrus Voitk ....................................... 17 The mycota Andrus Voitk ...................................... 19 Mycenella trachyspora Gro Gulden ........................................ 21 Rhizomarasmius epidryas Gro Gulden ....................................... 22 Mail basket ............................................ 24 Partners ......................... inside back cover Notice ...................................... back cover This issue and all previous issues available for download from the Foray Newfoundland & Labrador website <nlmushrooms.ca>. OMPHALINA 1 MMessageessage ffromrom tthehe EEditorditor Reports from two separate forays. it really means. A great honours project, by the The Birch Brook Nordic Ski Club organized a way, for anybody interested in heritage, community mushroom foray in Goose Bay at the end of August. studies, etc., to dig into the use of the red cap along It gives us great satisfaction to see an interest in our coastal communities. mushrooms spreading throughout the province. The balance of this issue is devoted to the Return Although FNL is a provincial organization in of the Vikings. Gro Gulden had a lifelong dream: membership, scope and name, it cannot provide to visit the Viking site at L’Anse aux Meadows. forays to all communities and regions. All are After she retired, she could fi nally do it. Invited welcome to the FNL foray, but with a province to our foray as an identifi er, she came earlier, to like ours travel to the single annual event is quite fulfi l her wish. Jon-Otto Aarnaes and a few Foray expensive for many. Our Board has often discussed Newfoundland & Labrador members accompanied a foray in Labrador City, Goose Bay and other her for a very memorable week. The highlight regions. The problem has always been the same: was sharing Akvavit with the nouveaux Vikings too expensive to organize and for most members at L’Anse aux Meadows. Or perhaps fi nding some to attend. If we leave our present members behind, small beautiful mushrooms. Or just sitting in we risk losing them. Other areas may not have the good company, back against a hill, eating lunch, infrastructure to support a full foray, even though overlooking the sea, soaking up the last warmth for there may be plenty of local interest, were one to the year from the September sun. happen in the community. These reports should get you all set for our own We do not have the volunteer resources to organize Foray Report, as a special Christmas treat, next more than one foray per year. The good folks in month. Preview: the biggest yield ever, close to 400 Goose Bay supplied the answer: organize your own! species identifi ed, and just under 100 species new to Organizing one major provincial foray, and providing our cumulative list. Make sure your subscriptions are expertise, advice and other consultative resources paid up, so that you can read all about it! to others is a much more realistic function for FNL, than providing all the forays in the province, where there is interest. Happy mushrooming! The lead article is the fi rst article on original andrus local ethnomycology to appear in OMPHALINA. The ethno-word has been given a bit of a bad rep by the mycopress. You can be excused if you think it means smoking pot, putting LBMs on your pizza and drinking beer from the bottle while nude in a communal hot tub. It does not. This article is what 2 OMPHALINA The fi rst time I ever saw an Inuk eat mushrooms was Russula paludosa, and described with enthusiasm in Labrador. During twenty-fi ve years of fi eldwork how he had loved to eat them as a boy. “We used in the Canadian Arctic, I often traveled with Inuit, to put a sheet of metal, tin or something, over a fi re and whenever I asked if it was okay to eat a certain and toss these mushrooms straight onto that,” he food, generally the answer was, “You can eat anything explained, “same as you’d cook mussels or capelin. At if you are hungry enough.” I was hungry enough on home we’d put’em on the pan whole, cap down.” several occasions to eat many things, including a Labradoreans of European and Inuit origin have been very fl ea-ridden ground squirrel, the cartilage from eating mushrooms with far more enthusiasm than a caribou nose, and some rather maggoty dried seal their neighbours in Newfoundland for well over meat from the bottom of a toolbox. But in all those a century. Emma Dicker Voisey, born in Rigolet in years, I never ate a mushroom nor did I ever see an 1884, used to pick mushrooms at Voisey’s Bay, but Inuk eat one. Yet, according to everyone I asked, Inuit was careful never to let her children harvest them traditionally ate mushrooms. So, I wasn’t surprised unless she was with them. “She knew the kind that when I saw my Inuk friend, Alex Saunders, picking was poison and the ones that was good to eat, and mushrooms one day on the North West Islands of showed them which ones to pick, which they would Lake Melville. Alex grew up among Innu in Davis cut up like onions and fry in the frying pan,” said her Inlet, and an Innu elder had already told me that, “the daughter Rose in Them Days magazine. “Oh, I loves only mushrooms Innu eat come on a take-out pizza.” mushrooms,” she added. However, Inuit are opportunistic eaters, willing to According to Grenfell nurse Kate Austin Merrick, Sir tackle just about anything. Wilfred Grenfell once had the mushrooms on Indian By the time I had moved to Labrador in 2006, I Harbour Island examined to determine which were was an avid chantereller. Several summer visits to edible, and wrote that in 1929 the nurses used to Battle Harbour had introduced me to boletes, and I gorge on them in season, although they could not also enjoyed the occasional puffball. However, I still get their Newfoundland staff to share their feasts. wasn’t confi dent about any other edible mushrooms It seems that the most popular and possibly only Labrador had to offer, so I willingly signed on for mushroom eaten regularly in Labrador was the an Edible Mushroom Foray sponsored by the Birch Russula Alex Saunders identifi ed. Called variously Brook Nordic Ski Club in Goose Bay. We had a “red tops”, “red caps” or just plain “mushrooms,” marvellous time stomping around in the woods, Jemima Learning recalls that her niece once came followed by a pot luck supper on the last evening.