Snow Fungus (Hey Oh)

Snow Fungus is a weird and wonderful creation. Give it a feel, it's tantalisingly tactile. Everyone has a moment of joy when they jiggle that jelly. I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine. 

I don't think you're ready for this jelly 🎵

It looks ethereal, like a bouquet of blooms. It's ready to adorn the forest fairies; a voluminous ruffled gown.

It's also ready to adorn the dinner plate. It's pretty flavourless, basically the tofu of the mushroom world, but has a great texture and will absorb cooking sauces and spices.

I don't eat Snow Fungus because it's delicious. I eat it because I'm vain. It helps guard against old lady wrinkles. It's full of polysaccharides which help collagen production.

This collagen is also good for overall health. I have a mangled body where something as simple as getting on a pair of socks is a struggle. Collagen won't help much, but us cripples clutch at whatever crumbs we can get. Maybe it will cushion those unsettling snap, crackle and pop sounds.

It's pretty easy to ID. So how do we identify Snow Fungus, Tremella fuciformis? Shape: • No cap or stem, just frilly • Billowy frills • No tiny spikes • No tight spirals

Colour: • White • Cream coloured when old or exposed to sunlight Texture: • Jelly, slippery when wet • Floppy, not hard like coral • Smooth, there are no teeth or gills

Season: • Typically April until August Location: • Grows on many types of dead wood

• Try Macedon region, Emerald, King Lake, Dandenongs, Sherbrooke

You'd have to be a complete dingus to confuse it for something toxic. The closest undesirable lookalike is probably someone's used tissue. There are no known deadly jelly fungi types, so if it's gelatinous you're probably in the clear.

Edible lookalike: Cat's Tongue Fungus, Pseudohydnum gelatinosum

The closest lookalike that you'll find is probably Cat's Tongue Fungus, Pseudohydnum gelatinosum, which has fine teeth-like texture on the underside. Only the most clueless forager could confuse it with Coral Tooth Fungus, Hericium coralloides. But both these lookalikes are still edible anyway.

Edible lookalike: Coral Tooth Fungus, Hericium coralloides

To find them, try hunting through the creepy freaky parts of the forest. It's found on fallen trees, among the dankest, darkest paths.

Because it grows on dead wood, you'd be forgiven for assuming it consumes wood like saprotrophic fungi, but it's actually a parasitic fungi. It consumes other fungi, like Annulohypoxylon types, and fungi nerds reckon they might even have some nice little trade deal going on. Fungal best friends forever.

Not many foragers head out especially to target Snow Fungus. You won't usually find it in huge numbers, you'll just stumble across a cluster while stocking up more plentiful mushies like Saffies or Blewits.

If you do find it, you can add it to stirfries with plenty of soy and oyster sauce. Try it in an Asian style dessert. Boil with rock sugar, dried red dates and goji berries to make a nourishing TCM sweet treat. Autumn is the most abundant season for foraging, so I often swap out those dried fruits for some foraged hawthorn, crab apple or elderberry.

You can even make Snow Fungus into lollies. Dehydrate it until brittle, then rehydrate it with fruit cheong (1:1 fruit and sugar, plus a splash of lemon juice), before semi-drying it again until chewy. They're like little gummy candies! Try prickly pear, lilly pilly or blackberry syrup, which are in season right now. So get some snow into you! The jiggly kind!