WASHINGTON -- David Spahr stooped near a tiny pine tree and brushed aside its delicate boughs.

Hidden underneath was a patch of yellow trumpet-shaped chanterelle mushrooms.

Spahr's knowledge of edible mushrooms, where to find them and what to avoid recently become a book, "Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada."

"I used to be a photographer, so I took my own pictures for the book and started a Web site," he said. "I say here's how you find them instead of giving one-word descriptions. I don't do much with recipes, but I give directions for the correct preparation of each species. They're like vegetables. They have different colors and flavors and textures. My book matches mushrooms to cooking processes, which works the best."

Spahr also cultures spores and grows spawn -- used to start a new mushrooms -- in the woodlot next to his Nelson Ridge Road home.

Mushrooms grow in areas where there are diverse species of trees including hemlocks, pines and oaks. Like any flowering plant, he said, mushrooms have a specific habitat. Some grow in open fields and some grow on mature or dead trees.

Rather than having rotted logs lying around his property or a growing room in his home, Spahr is attempting to inoculate fresh stumps and induce growth of local wild and other species by transplanting and spore distribution.

"I plant trees hoping mushroom patches associated with the tree will grow," Spahr said. "I'll pick the mushrooms and then exchange the tree with a another pine tree and move it someplace else where chanterelles grow. Chanterelles tend to relate to tree species like white pine and balsam spruce quite well. I have inoculated probably 200 stumps to spread mushroom spores to a lot of locations on my property."

He also has some spots on the other side of town, woodsy back roads, where he forages for mushrooms.

Besides edible mushrooms, he has tried his hand at low-cost woodlot farming using indigenous edible plants, trees and bushes, including creeping dewberry and wild blackberries.

Spahr, 59, leads mushroom-foraging walks during the summer and fall on his property and elsewhere.

"I'm somewhat of a naturalist," he said. "I do propagation strategies on my property. I inoculate stumps. I have trees that I cut fresh, then fill the holes with mushroom spawn. A mushroom is simply a fruit, a mycelium, which is composed of hyphae, chains of fungal cells. It's an actual organism that is going to grow and move around."

Mushrooms can be found throughout most of the year, but peak season for mushroom fruiting in Maine woods is early fall.

A word of caution, however, because poisonous varieties exist in Maine. The North American Mycological Association recommends that wild mushrooms should never be eaten without consulting an expert first.

This summer's wet weather had hurt collecting, he said.

"Mushrooms tend to come back every year, but the truth is this has been a bad year," Spahr said. "I guess we'd have to just blame it on the weather. Mushrooms are doing about as well as most vegetables."

His guidebook to finding and using key species is distributed by Random House and can be found at area bookstores including Barnes & Noble, as well as his Web site, at http://mushroom-collecting.com.

He said nearly all species in the book and on the Web site were gathered and photographed within 35 miles of his home.

Mechele Cooper -- 623-3811, ext. 408

mcooper@centralmaine.com