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 Vic native chanterelle for comparison.
Taste I hear you ask? Excellent!
Very nice find. I found some very similar Feb 2019
Nice work – any photos?
Love your work man! How exciting!
Thanks mate was a pretty exciting moment I can tell you
Amazing! Great find and excellent pics… cheers!
Did you get DNA results? I would say that was a cantharellus cibarius from the photos, but a great find nonetheless!
Hi Andrew – it got delayed due to Lockdown but I will definately update as soon as we have them!
Some onions, and garlic done in butter…very nice.
sounds perfect!
Have found this species between Powelltown and Noojee along the History walk along the
La Trobe river.(15 04 2014) Have placed it as a Cantharellus ciberius look alike. A species on the Mushroom observer . The ALA has 51 records of this species. The Image is in a folder Gilled sp Mycoorhizal at the Flicker site zeke1944
Thanks for the info. I think between us and a few others we’ve sequenced about nine separate species of Chanterelle locally and most match Genbank sequences of undescribed Australian species.
Have found this species near Powelltown 15 04 2014 posted on flickr site zeke1944 in album
Gills Micorrhizal. as Cahtharellus ciberius lookalike. (51 ALA records)
Interestingly another Richard posted a picture of a chanterelle in the Yarra Ranges under Nothofagus that looked identical to this chanterelle so perhaps it is a native species? Somehow swapped over to introduced oak?
Its sequence gave some interesting results but it was LSU which isnt as specific.
I guess the 51 records on ALA described as ‘Cantharellus ciberius lookalike’ might include lots of different species? Seems most are described as concinnus or ciberius when DNA work suggests there are quite a few distinct entities?
This guy seemed to sit around Cantharellus minor or albus from memory when we had it sequenced although this was LSU so probably less specific than ITS.
We have about nine sequenced chanterelle/Cantharellus species from Australia and some pretty interesting results – the large smooths from Victoria amazingly matched ones found at the very tip of Cape York. That result seemed hard to believe.