Appetite for Knowledge Goes Down the Hatch

A 40-pound mushroom that was going to be dried and stored at Purdue University as an educational specimen was instead sauteed in butter and eaten by three scientists.

The mushroom, at 26 inches across, was too big to fit in a special dryer used by the Arthur Herbarium, home of Purdue’s plant and fungi collection.

“It’s edible, you know, so there were three professors up here and they decided to divide it up and eat it,” said Joe Hennen, a professor of botany.

The polyporus frondous--or a hen-of-the-woods--grew in the roots of a fallen maple tree in Virginia Emerick’s back yard in West Point. She mowed around it and finally decided to harvest the mushroom last week after extreme heat and humidity caused a growth spurt.