A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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chanterelle
A chanterelle is a mushroom shaped like a shallow trumpet, egg-yolk to apricot in color, with blunt forking ridges running down the stem instead of true gills. The ridges are what identifies it. They are wrinkles in the flesh rather than blades attached to it, and they will not peel cleanly away. It smells faintly of apricot. It grows in partnership with tree roots and cannot be farmed, so every chanterelle in every market was found by somebody.
Etymology
The name came into English from French, and behind the French is a Latin word meaning a little tankard, from the Greek for a two-handled drinking cup. The mushroom is named for its shape as a vessel. French has an identical-looking word that causes regular confusion: chanterelle is also the top string on a violin, the one that sings, and the two words have nothing to do with each other.
Notes
The false chanterelle and the jack-o’-lantern both approximate the color, and neither has the forking blunt ridges. Chanterelles fruit in the same spots for decades, which is why pickers keep their ground to themselves. In Poland, Russia, and much of Scandinavia, they are a kitchen staple rather than a delicacy.