The abundance and diversity of local mushrooms continues to increase around here, what with our frequent rains and temperatures that have yet to obey the dictates of the calendar and begin to diminish. But I'm just not all that adept at identifying fungi, and it's beginning to really annoy me. Clearly, I need more and better field guides, or, failing that, I need to apprentice myself to a decent field mycologist and really learn mushroom identification. There are, however, a few I know at first sight, and among them is the Black Trumpet, which is also named the "Trumpet of the Dead"—a moniker I always found curious. Craterellus cornucopioides—I learned the Latin name half-a-century ago, and I've never forgotten it—isn't a mushroom that will usher the ingester into the land of the non-living... anything but. It's one of the best tasting delights on the planet, but folks viewing the fungus apparently thought it resembled a primitive horn played by a member of the underground. Maybe I should listen to funeral marches while I collect it for dinner.