Stropharia rugosoannulata’s regal appearance and distinctive potato and red wine flavor have earned it a colorful assortment of common names, including king stropharia, wine cap mushroom, garden giant, Godzilla mushroom, and stroph. Wild strophs pop up throughout the summer and fall, almost always fruiting on woodchips in landscaped areas or forest clearings. Once you find a patch, they may fruit repeatedly throughout the season following rain.

After nearly getting lost last week tromping through brambles and poison ivy in search of the spring’s last morels, I was reminded that sometimes the best mushroom patches are right under our noses. On Thursday, I went for a lunch break saunter behind my workplace on Cornell’s Ag Quad. I wasn’t explicitly looking for mushrooms, but I still found my greedy gaze continually returning to the ground in search of sylvan booty.

Sometimes the best meals emerge spontaneously from circumstance. Yesterday we had two foraging finds: king stropharia mushrooms in the parking lot of one of our favorite local hiking trails, and over three pounds of ancho chiles growing beneath the weeds in our second, abandoned community garden plot. We went to the hiking spot with the intention of searching for hedgehog and lion’s mane mushrooms deep in the woods, equipped with camera, knife, and basket. Before even stepping out of the car, we noticed a pound of gorgeous strophs basking in the sun. These turned out to be our only find of the hike; sometimes you don’t have to travel far to find the best mushrooms!