Sarcodon imbricatus — hawk’s wing, shingled hedgehog, scaly tooth. A large brown mushroom with a cap covered in coarse dark overlapping scales, and instead of gills or pores it has downward-pointing spines or teeth. That tooth surface makes it unmistakable once you have seen it, and it puts the mushroom in a small group with lion’s mane and hedgehogs.
In Colorado spruce forest in late summer it is abundant to the point of being unavoidable, which is why every new forager here asks about it.
Teeth on the underside plus a scaly shingled cap under spruce is a straightforward identification. The difficulty with this species is not what it is — it is whether you will want to eat it.
This is the honest part. Hawk’s wing ranges from pleasantly nutty to aggressively bitter, and which one you get is unpredictable. The factors that seem to matter:
Test before you commit: cook a small piece and taste it before processing a whole basket. Many experienced Colorado foragers ignore this species entirely for exactly this reason, and that is a defensible position.
Young caps only. Trim the spines off the underside — they hold grit and contribute to the bitterness — and cut the flesh into thick slices. Dry-sauté hard, then a long slow cook; hawk’s wing is dense and benefits from more time than most species. Braises and stews suit it better than a quick sear.
It also dries well, and drying reportedly moderates the bitterness somewhat. Powdered dried hawk’s wing is genuinely good as a seasoning — see mushroom powder, which is a reasonable destination for a species you cannot fully trust in slices.
Hawk’s wing is a well-known dye mushroom, producing blue-green shades on wool. If you find a basketload of bitter ones, that is a better outcome than the compost heap.
Do not confuse it with Hericium — lion’s mane — which also has spines but is a white cushion growing on wood, not a scaly brown cap growing from soil. Nor with the smaller, sweeter hedgehog mushrooms (Hydnum), which are pale orange, smooth-capped and much better eating.
It is edible but unreliable. Young specimens can be pleasantly nutty; mature or dry-weather ones are often too bitter to eat. Always cook and taste a small piece before processing a whole harvest.
A large brown cap covered in coarse shingled scales, with dense grey-brown spines instead of gills underneath, growing from soil under spruce at high elevation.
Age and growing conditions mostly — older caps and dry-weather specimens are much more bitter, with a lot of unexplained individual variation. Drying moderates it somewhat.
No. Both have spines, but lion’s mane is a white cushion growing on wood, and hawk’s wing is a scaly brown capped mushroom growing from soil.
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