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Y'all we are deeeeep in chanterelle season,
so we're going to dive into the nitty gritty:
I'm talking breaking these babies down into specific species, subspecies, and...
pre-species?
Stick with me here...
So we've talked about Golden Chanterelles, Smooth Chanterelles, Appalachian Chanterelles, and Cinnabar Chanterelles (shown respectively in gallery below)...
BUT there's another that's been hiding in plain sight...
The latin name for the "Peach Chanterelle" is Cantharellus persicinus, and they're native to the Appalachian region! *But lets be clear these are NOT the same as Appalachian Chanterelles 🙃 * Peach Chanterelles actually closely resemble the Golden Chanterelle in both texture and shape, but these are slightly different in color. During my first encounters with Peach Chanterelles I thought some of the Golden Chanterelles had simply lost some pigment with rainfall (a common occurrence with mushrooms), but the more I found, the more distinctive these peach babies seemed from their golden sisters.
Yep, you guessed it, they're a light pinkish-peach color rather than the "Golden" yellowish-orange. Each year I spot these beauties among the Golden Chanterelle patches I frequent, and they tend to emerge about halfway through the chanterelle season, just as Smooth Chanterelles are making their way into the mix.
Peach Chanterelles occur less frequently than other chanterelle species, and research from studies in 2003 and 2006 show that Cantharellus persicinus may even be one of the original chanterelles from which the Golden Chanterelles evolved (Kuo M., 2015)! The field of mycology is still so young and new discoveries are constantly on the horizon. So keep a curious eye out on your next walk in the woods... who knows, you may even discover a whole new mushroom species!
Sources:
Kuo, M. (2015, March). Cantharellus persicinus. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/cantharellus_persicinus.html