As I approach my most reliable maitake tree – a hollowed giant, long gone but still producing – my steps slow to prolong the riveting suspense. This decaying oak let me down last year, but then again, so did my other trees ... chalk it up to a bad season. It’s only early September, and a bit drier of late, but this cool, misty morning is full of promise.

My heart sank as I reached the crest of the hill to find my most faithful maitake (hen of the woods) tree standing naked, unadorned. After a summer plagued by drought, I had grown accustomed to such disappointment. But the successful hunter is an eternal optimist, always seeing potential in every fiber of the forest. We’d finally gotten a half-inch of rain, and it couldn’t hurt to get down on my hands and knees and scour for signs of hen.

After a rainy day at the office, I head straight for the woods to catch the last rays of daylight. It is already too dark to hunt, unless you know exactly where to look.  Maitake is on my mind, and I am jumping from oak to oak in search of a hefty hen of the woods (Grifola frondosa).

As many readers probably imagine, mushrooms are quite the common topic of conversation in our home. Ari and I often like to list our top five favorite wild mushrooms, and maitake (Grifola frondosa), or hen of the woods, consistently makes the cut. However, I always forget how much I love maitake until I experience my first bite of the season.

Were it not for the neon pink, grotesquely phallic elegant stinkhorns, I never would have noticed the hen hiding in plain sight in downtown Northampton, MA.  Just when I thought the 2012 season had come to a close, the foraging gods have rewarded me with a final, long awaited treat. 

When the bounty is more than plentiful, it’s time to share. This past weekend we hosted a local foods potluck with a wild mushroom tasting featuring hen of the woods, black trumpets, smooth chanterelles, yellow foot chanterelles and lion’s mane. Guests arrived to find a spread on our dining room table with the five mushrooms, labeled, in their uncooked state. And then, out came the cooked mushrooms, hot off the cast iron pan.

The venerable maitake, or hen of the woods (Grifola frondosa), is on the horizon. While bite for bite, I must concede that the morel, porcini, and black trumpet all pack more flavor, there is nothing as satisfying and rewarding as finding a massive hen roosting on the ground at the base of a living tree or stump in the fall. Maitake, prized in Japan and China for its edible, medicinal, and nutritional properties, arrives as soon as the first of September and can be found as late as early November in the Northeast. While I most frequently see them around oak trees, they can occasionally be found near maple, elm, beech, chestnut, sycamore, and black locust. After you have discovered a patch, it will reliably come back every fall for the duration of its several year life span, assuming temperatures are not too extreme and rainfall is adequate.