Winter hunt

Winter is upon us, and I don't care what the calendar says because the temperatures in this part of the world have dropped below freezing already.

Naturally, mushrooms are not keen on the weather, and apart from an occasional bunch of ink caps, there is nothing to be seen among all the frost.

These days my hunts have to happen in mushroom isles of supermarkets. And I can tell you, the latest hasn't been bad at all! Behold - grey chanterelles:

Craterellus tubaeformis, all cleaned and ready to be cooked. Origin: South France, according to the label.
I have a feeling I'm missing out here in the frozen North...

Curiously, despite their name these fungi are only distantly related to the golden chanterelle, and in fact recent molecular phylogenetics studies have placed them in a different genus, Craterellus. Still, when it comes to putting these fungi into omelettes, they are just as good as their better-known cousin.

Sunday brunch: served!

Some parasitic fungi

It's a fungus! Rhytisma acerinum

Autumn is almost at the end, with temperatures regularly dropping blow zero at night, but some fungal life is still in evidence. There are some "real" mushrooms on the ground, with stipe, cap, gills and everything, but the true abundance these days is found on tree leaves. It wasn't so obvious during the summer months, but it looks like all maples in the area are heavily infected with sycamore tarspot. Fortunately, it is quite harmless to the trees' long-term health, even though it looks horrible.

But at least, these fungi are feeding on plants, which is not so bad compared to the next photo:

The original of this image can be found here. It's a fungus eat fungus world out there!

Taste of the future: mushroom burgers

Portobello burger served in Honolulu

I was pointed today to a news article that praises burgers made with a mixture of beef and mushrooms. Apparently, you can mix up to 50% of mushrooms into beef mince without sacrificing the flavour.

Wow. The wonders of twenty-first century life. And mushrooms, of course.

I totally approve of this development. Meat is an important part of our diet, and eating it allowed our distant ancestors to grow larger brains, become more intelligent, and ultimately build wonderful things like computers and mushroom farms. Unfortunately, it also makes the twenty-first century man edge ever closer to obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Mixing meat with mushrooms seems like a viable half-measure: it seriously reduces the calorie content of the patty, and therefore your waistline is more likely to stay unexpanded.

After all, if it doesn't, you could always go for hardcore:

16 kcal per 100 grams. No half-measures here!

Image credit:
Grilled portobello mushrooms burger

Mushrooms and kilts

Scottish foraging
(artist's impression!)

Glasgow these days is getting ready for Commonwealth Games that are due to open on 23rd July next year, and part of the preparations is to make city's numerous blank building walls look better by painting murals on them. These have been springing up left and right recently, mostly featuring some kind of athletic activity. The one in Merchant city, however, features local wildlife: red deer, highland cattle, badgers, a manic squirrel being hunted by a fox, and a man in a kilt hunting mushrooms.

It is good to see that fungi are being featured with prominence they deserve. The picker is even holding an edible mushroom (bay boletus in fact), so the artists must have done some basic research. Just don't take it as recommendation for action and go to a forest dressed like this: a kilt would do nothing to protect you against ticks!

Mushrooms in late autumn

It has been a while since I posted some proper fungi spotting photos. Edible mushroom season is long gone, but quite a few tenacious fungi are still getting their heads above ground. Like this one, for instance:

Common cavalier, growing in leaf litter in mixed woodland

A couple of minutes later, while walking along a river bank under some very old pine trees, I found a big group of cavalier's relatives.

Clouded funnels. There were about a hundred of them on that spot!

Moving on, I found the only truly non-edible mushroom for today, growing on a rotting stump leaning over a stream. That's right, the two species above are edible, although not recommended due to combination of lack of taste and texture, possibility of confusion with similar poisonous species and occasional individual gastric reactions even if correctly identified.

A splash of colour - a welcome change from previous specimens. Brick tuft.
Beautiful, but not edible even when this young

Finally, right next to my office (did I mention that I took the pictures on my way to work today?), a company of ink caps, past their prime, but still looking good enough for a photo.

Remember: it's either eating these, or drinking alcohol. DO NOT combine!

All in all, not a bad photo collection for the last day of October! It has been very mild recently, with lots of rain, hence the relative fungal abundance. I'm sure I'll be back soon with more photos. Meanwhile, stay warm, and don't eat any funny mushrooms!

Botanicula

The journey begins

I came over this unusual game by accident, and still wondering if I should get a full version of it. It is a point and click adventure in which a motley crew of mushrooms and insects are embarking on a journey to plant a seed. It has most adorable sounds and music (if you listen to the tiny squeaks those travelling fungi make, you are guaranteed to fall in love with them after five minutes), and graphics like I have never seen before. Beautiful. And weird (in a good sense).

As for the gameplay, the demo can be played in under a minute if you know what you are doing, but the great thing about this game is that there are so many objects and places you can explore that are not compulsory. The more you click, the more cute animations and adorable sounds you discover.

A full version of Botanicula costs $10, and if you enjoy leisurely meditative puzzles (although, who doesn't?), it is worth every penny.

Mushrooms in the sky...

Or rather, mushroom-shaped cities with the base on the surface of the ocean, with their "caps" rising to 700 metres above sea level. I can't seem to stop thinking about "Green floats" these days.

Shimizu's arcologies may not be practicable, but I love their imagination and ambition. Also, we really need to do something with all that rubbish floating in the ocean. Dealing with the issue by constructing humongous mushrooms is bizarre but also strangely appropriate. After all, fungi are great recyclers. In a video that I posted a while ago, Paul Stamets listed six ways in which fungi can save the world. This might just be the seventh.

Mushroom cities in the Pacific

Concept art for the floating city

I came across this article today, describing the sorry state of the Pacific ocean, which is gradually turning into a rubbish dump, and also a lifeless desert, due to extreme overfishing.

Why write about it in a mushroom blog? Because, according to the same article, fish and mushrooms are the only two wild foods that humans still consume regularly. There is literally nothing else! And, apparently, we are running out of fish, as well as ocean itself.

However, it pleases me that there are dreamers out there working to solve the garbage issue: Shimizu corporation who proposed a concept of a carbon-negative city, freely floating on equatorial ocean currents, recycling all those discarded plastics into building materials and energy.

These cities cannot yet be constructed with the current state of technology, but Shimizu's R&D people are very busy developing them. In 25 years, these will become a reality.

Come to think if it, the place seems to be a very nice retirement spot. And don't those towers look just like giant mushrooms?

Image credit:
Greenfloat city, Shimizu corporation

Soup with Judas' ears

There is a famous Russian cookbook by Yelena Molokhovets, published in 1861, entitled "A gift to young housewives, or the way to decrease expenses in running your household". Its recipes typically start like this: "Boil a whole chicken, keep the stock, and give the chicken away to your servants", or "If you husband has unexpectedly brought home guests, and there is absolutely nothing in the house, don't despair: go to the attic and get a leg of ham..."

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. This weekend I roasted a chicken with lots of herbs and spices, and it seemed to be such a shame just to throw the carcass away after the meat was picked clean off it, so I decided to make some chicken bone soup. Once the stock was strained and ready, I added some chicken meat, frozen sweetcorn and, of course mushrooms.

Just a handful of dried Auricularia auricula-judae.

Normally, when I cook new mushrooms, I tend to be cautious and use just a little bit, but these were pre-packed dried fungi, flown to me all the way from Singapore, so I thought, no need to be shy. I dropped in six, and closed the lid.

Five minutes later, I heard some strange noises coming from the kitchen. The fungi soaked up HALF of the liquid in the pot and were literally crawling out of the pot! (Thankfully, there was more than enough stock in it). The disaster was narrowly avoided only with a hasty transfer to a larger pot. They made for a great soup in the end: a bit leathery in texture, but that was in perfect contrast to sweetcorn and croutons, so the culinary experiment was definitely a success.

Fancy some leathery ears?

That wasn't the end of it though. Next day, I decided to take the remaining fungi out of the soup and give them the standard treatment of frying in butter, because everything tastes better that way, right? Right... Even though I sliced them into thin strips, the explosion in my kitchen was still quite spectacular. Note to self: Judas' ears - soups ONLY. NO frying!

Behind the scenes at Kew Gardens

The short video below gives a behind-the-scenes view of Kew fungarium. It is the largest collection of dried fungi in the world, with 1.25 million samples. As you can see, I am still not over the impression that the current events at Kew Gardens have made on me. Finally, there is an institution that not only recognises the importance of fungi, but also makes a serious attempt to promote this idea to the general public!

It particularly pleases me that their mushroom-oriented programme of events is running over the school holidays and is directed at children. The present attitude to fungi in Britain, which can be summarised as "Stay away from those hideous things!" upsets me greatly, even though it means that I have zero competition while foraging. I'm glad that there are efforts in place to change this. Although, perhaps they shouldn't have named one of their kid-friendly workshops "Hands-on with magical mushrooms"...

Mushrooms at Kew Gardens

These would fill a few freezers...

Being based in Scotland is great for mushroom forays, but sometimes it feels like I'm way too far from the places where exciting things are happening.

Certainly, the new exhibition of fungi sculptures at Kew Gardens is one of such events. The best I could do in this case was to ask a couple of friends to go for a visit and take a few photos.

The pictures are not the best you'll see in this blog, but the subject matter is so great that even these mobile phone snaps look amazing. If only I could do them myself, with a proper camera!

Mmm... morels. One day, I'll find
the real ones!

The sculptor, Tom Hare, used different shades of willow twigs. Look how skilfully he layered them in his morels, to show off the wrinkles and cavities that distinguish this species. My favourite bit though is the underside of porcini mushrooms: the straw from which it is made does a perfect job imitating the spongy hymenium, both in texture and colour. They look... real!

The sculptures are enormous, some over 4 metres in height. Tom Hare's wonderful creations will be decorating the Broad Walk in Kew until 3rd November.

Unexpected finds in Glasgow city centre

This weekend I decided to give myself a bit of rest from any fungal delights (there really can be too much of a good thing) and instead of my usual forest walk went to Glasgow, thinking that I'd be safe among its concrete and stone.

All went well for a while, but then I lost my guard and went through a tiny bit of green space, just a stone's throw away from George Square. The next thing I knew, I was ambushed by this:

A brown birch bolete. In case you have any doubts, that is hosta and rhododendron foliage in the background.

There were several more of these growing in a nice semi-circular formation that had a birch in its centre. The tree could not have been more than 10 years old.

A couple more steps, and I stumbled against a semicircle of these:

Woolly milk cap, associated with the same tree as brown birch boletes.

Already finding it hard to believe my eyes, I turning attention to a nearby pine, also about 10 years old, and got another surprise.

Ugly milk caps, highly prized and commercially gathered in Russia for pickling. Normally associated with mature pine

Following that semicircle, I went deeper into the rhododendron bushes surrounding the pine, and, and...

You've got to be kidding me

How is this even possible? OK, fly agarics that grow in Britain are too toxic to be of any recreational use, but a group of over 30 of them (out of which 17 can be clearly seen in this photo) has no place in the middle of Glasgow. There was that recent case of a psychiatric patient and magic mushrooms though... Maybe it's a tendency.

Much has been said about difficulty of cultivating mycorrhizal mushrooms, but the truth is, cultivating them is not difficult, just extremely random and unpredictable. My experience this weekend shows that, given the right conditions, a most extraordinary array of forest fungi can spring up just from a couple of trees that happened to carry bits of mycelium and were lucky enough to be transplanted to a spot where soil composition, structure, surrounding plants, temperature, moisture and sunlight were exactly right.

From which I conclude that growing forest mushrooms is not an entirely futile cause. We just have to keep trying.

Mushroom gangs

Perhaps not very
appropriate for an article
about edible fungi!

There has been a couple of near identical articles recently in The Telegraph and The Daily Mail about unscrupulous mushroom pickers (coming "mostly from Eastern Europe" of course, where else!) going around fields and forests in Hampshire and stripping "huge tracts of land" bare of fungi, getting huge profits from this year's bumper harvest.

The Daily Mail has a photo of several baby porcini illustrating their article, whereas The Telegraph proudly displays a very nice image of panther caps, which are both very toxic AND psychoactive. Ironically, the latter article contains urgent advice to its readers to arm themselves with guide books, and never ever pick fungi that cannot be identified with absolute certainty. Perhaps they should follow their own advice and start with their photo editor?..

Image credit:
Amanita pantherina

Mushroom festival!

My correspondent reports from St Petersburg, Russia:

"There was a mushroom festival here this weekend!"

Looking at the photos, I just wish I'd been there. Firstly, a spread of various mushrooms found in the Leningrad region (both edible and inedible). presented by St Petersburg mycological society:

It's curious how exactly the same mushrooms and mosses grow so far away from Scotland, but there you are

Some of the mushrooms were for sale, too. Unfortunately, the only ones sold fresh were chanterelles (my friend was greatly disappointed because she was much hoping for saffron milk caps to which I managed to get her addicted in Scotland), but the selection of salted and marinated ones was most impressive.

Catering for every taste

And finally, the centrepiece of the festival: a massive vat of mushroom soup. The charge was £3 per bowl, but apparently it was worth it. They really cooked it in that huge thing! What can I say. Russians. Awesome.

The mushrooms were collected by company "Matreco" in Komi region. According to the sign, the cooks were from
"Russian college of traditional culture". The soup must have been amazing!

Mushroom gardening

Shaggy scalycap, growing under
a cherry tree - a beautiful sight

Mushroom season is clearly at an end. Mycelium in Scottish forests has exhausted all its stored nutrients, and thus very few new fruitbodies are produced. There might still be some stray bay boletes and pearl puffballs popping out, so I might make one or two more foraging trips this year, but this looks like a good moment to put this blog into a winter mode, with three posts a week instead of five.

It has been a reasonably good season. Not as amazingly spectacular as promised by national news back in August, but I still managed to stock my freezer with a few kilograms of fine porcini, not to mention all the fresh wild mushroom dishes that I'd cooked for my long-suffering family over the summer and early autumn. They are openly relieved that wild fungi will be off menu for a while!

There is no longer any pressure to bring home "the goods", so it was easier to pay more attention to purely aesthetic qualities of fungi I encountered. It is curious that while the edibles are all but spent, all other kinds just keep jumping out of the ground, adding colour and texture to parks, lawns and gardens. Consider the scalycap fungus pictured above: I found it at the edge of a communal garden, and it certainly looks like someone planted the flowers around it to create a perfect composition, in anticipation of its emergence as the centrepiece of the floral composition.

A group of Paxillus validus

Or take the next picture, a group of Paxillus validus, lovely brown and golden fungi (closely related to brown roll rims) that I spotted growing next to the Riverside museum in Glasgow this weekend. The area where they are sprouting has only recently been developed, and as such it only features fairly small tree saplings on standard-issue grass cover. How fortunate that the roots of those saplings were carrying fungal mycelium! It will take many years for the place to become a real park, but in the meantime the mushrooms successfully manage to break the monotony of generic planted landscape, and make the place look so much closer to nature.

Decorative mushroom gardening? Not as preposterous as it sounds!

Fantastic fungi

I have to confess that I absolutely love time-lapse videos of growing fungi, and the one below, featuring Paul Stametz, is in my opinion one of the finest of its kind.

I have to say that do not agree with his view that nature is "intelligent": it is true that it is a very intricate system that can do very complicated things (maintaining balance in ecosystems is one that immediately comes to mind), but it certainly does not possess intelligence in the way humans do.

However, I admire his dedication to all things fungi, and greatly looking forward to the mushroom paradise that he is promising to mankind.

If you are normal...

Some mushrooms
are better left alone

... you go searching for mushrooms. No, really - according to this article. I read it with a mixture of pleasure and annoyance. Pleasure - because people in the US are finally recognising that not all mushrooms are evil, and that wild mushroom pickers are not necessarily prospective patients of psychiatric hospitals (the title definitely suggests that it is a possibility).

Annoyed, well - so many reasons. Firstly, why do you have to pay 200 bucks a day to hire a mushroom guide? Seriously, you pay me that much, and I'll show you ALL my mushrooming spots. Any takers? Hmm, ok, moving on.

The main annoyance is the tone of the article of course - hey, look, these weird Russians, they don't even know how to cook mushrooms properly! Also, the reference to WWII was rather inappropriate. "anti-tank trenches[...], which are ideal for mushrooms". Those trenches were created during the Siege of Leningrad. I'd find some other place to pick my mushrooms, just to avoid those ancestral memories. Of course, you cannot expect an American to understand that. After all, they still believe that they won that war...

Image credit:
Anti-tank obstacle and plaque: "Front line of Leningrad defence. 1941-44"

Brown roll rim

Paxillus involutus

Many people are scared of poisonous fungi such as death caps, or destroying angels, or deadly web caps, which kill you quickly, painfully, and reliably. Fungal poisoning though can be more subtle than that. Meet the brown roll rim, the fungus that could kill you after you'd eaten it one hundred times with no ill effects. That one last time, it causes an autoimmune reaction in its victims that destroys red blood cells, ultimately causing kidney failure. It is not a cumulative poison, as some sources suggest. The exact reasons why some, but not all, instances of brown roll rim consumption result in serious illness, are not known.

Because deaths by brown roll rims are so rare, the toxicity of this mushroom has not been recognised until recently. Indeed, in parts of Central and Eastern Europe it is still consumed, sometimes in great quantities, as evidenced by the photo below.

Looks great, but these are not for me

I have to admit that this species highlights a serious issue with wild food generally: in truth, you never can have a total guarantee that the stuff you bring in from the forest is safe. There are no biological, chemical or radiological controls to reassure you, unlike in big supermarkets (although, the recent horsemeat burger scandal shows that even their procedures are not 100% reliable).

Fortunately, with properly identified edible mushrooms the risk is minimal. But brown roll rims? No matter how inviting that pot of cooked mushrooms looks, I'm giving it a miss.

Image credits:
Paxillus involutus
Cooked brown roll rim (personal communication)

Meanwhile, in the East...

Mushroom season here in Scotland is ending, but this is clearly not the case in other places. Consider this foraging report I got from a friend in Germany:

Ceps, lurid boletes and a few bay boletes - very nice haul!

But it is the Ukrainian report that makes me truly jealous. Saffron milk caps. SAFFRON MILK CAPS!!

Maybe I'm living in a wrong country...

At the end of the season

I had a wonderful time in the forest this Sunday. The mushrooming season is clearly coming to a close, but I must confess that despite the scarcity of fungi, these last trips I find the most pleasurable of all. Mostly, because of the declining number of blood-sucking insects. A good repellent does away with 99% of the problem, but the remaining 1% can really hurt. Another reason, perhaps unexpectedly, is that there are fewer mushrooms.

Yes, that's right! When there are many mushrooms, they are harder to carry home, and also collecting them is a routine and not an adventure that it should be. Early August, every mushroom is just a +1 for the freezer. Late September, each and every one is an achievement and testimony to a mushroom hunter's skill.

And here was the first set - Lycoperdon perlatum:

Not that spectacular, perhaps, but edible and abundant

In fact, I have never cooked these before, so there is the challenge for tomorrow. After that, one of the forest staples:

Brown birch bolete - not the most amazing mushroom in existence, but every little helps!

Not long after - a whole family of slippery jacks:

Now, there is enough for supper in the basket!

Next, a perfect specimen of a fly agaric. Left it alone, of course, but kept my eyes peeled, because where there are fly agarics, there would be ceps, too.

If only it were edible... but so beautiful!

And then, right next to it - I couldn't believe my eyes! So late in the season, but there is was:

A cep! Touched by mould a bit, but still edible.

And here is the complete crop of the day. Just enough for tea!

Pearly puffballs (top left, brown birch boletes (centre), bay bolete (top right), chanterelles (bottom right),
cep (centre left), and slippery jacks all over the place.

More mushroom cultivation

Lately I have been thinking more and more of it - and accordingly, watching videos on how it's done. Here is how they do it in California (not that it's different from anywhere else!)

The essential steps to growing mushrooms, according to this video, are:

- making mushroom compost
- peak-heat
- spawning
- casing
- pinning
- harvesting

Enjoy, and see you next week for more mushroom stories!

Which kind of chanterelle?

Early chanterelles

A recent news article raises an interesting issue, which is that many mushrooms that we normally think of as a single species, are not. Kathryn Perez and Matthew Foltz proved by DNA analysis that golden chanterelles growing in Hixon Forest in Wisconsin are in fact three different species, and not merely colour variants.

Chanterelles are mushrooms that I collect every foraging trip, and one thing I have been puzzled about is how long their fruiting season is. It starts in mid-June and continues until mid-October, and sometimes even later if there is no ground frost. No other fungus in the local forest covers even half of that span.


Over these four months, it does not fruit everywhere though, but rather there are "early" and "late" spots, and the mushrooms from these do have a difference in appearance. Early chanterelles are typically smaller and lighter in colour, with cream stems and wavy false gills. Later in the year, I see only yolk-coloured, larger fungi.

Late chanterelles

Previously, I thought that the difference in shape and colour is explained by the variance in conditions in which these chanterelles grow, temperature- and humidity-wise, but I realise now that their emergence in different spots probably does mean that they are distinct species.

Not sure about one thing though - the article says, "Documenting the new species, their locations, and physical differences including taste, will be of interest to the culinary industry". I am no mycologist, but I have cooked a lot of chanterelles in my life. You can trust me on this: these mushrooms might look different, but THEY ALL TASTE THE SAME!

Beef stroganoff with wild mushrooms

Ingredients

With the unique crop I brought home last Sunday, I thought I needed to do something special, and taking upon the challenge of cooking an edible beef stroganoff seemed just right.

Ingredients were as follows:

- 300g rump steak, cut in thin strips
- flour, to coat the above
- 100g shallots
- a few cloves of garlic
- large glass of white wine

The right way to fry meat

- 100g single cream
- sage, bay leaf, peppercorns
- 1 cube of porcini stock (but vegetable stock would do just fine)
- herbs, to garnish

Now, am I missing something? Oh, yes, and of course:

about 300g of finest wild mushrooms as found in Scottish forests. I have used ceps, slippery jacks, one brown birch bolete and a few hundred amethyst deceivers. But if you can't get those, plain chestnut mushrooms will do just fine.

The main ingredient

Process:

Coat the meat in flour, and throw on pre-heated frying pan. Fry for a few minutes on high heat, turning once. The meat must brown slightly, but must NOT be cooked through. This is very important as otherwise it'll stay tough, no matter how long it is stewed afterwards. In another pan, fry the halved shallots, sliced garlic and sage leaves, on medium heat. Once the meat has browned, add it to the shallots. Make sure you scrape all the delicious crispy bits from the pan into the pot. That's what will make the stroganoff taste so good!

Last stage, 30 minutes before end

Turn the heat up and pour in the wine. Dissolve the stock cube in 0.5l of boiling water and pour it all in. Cover the pot with heavy lid and simmer on medium low heat.

Meanwhile, clean and wash the mushrooms. Add them to the pot after 1 hour, and cook for a further 30 minutes. Add the cream, bring to the boil, and you are done!

Serve with chips or roast potatoes and fresh herbs. Bon appetit!

Note how the tiny laccarias keep their purple colour in the stew. These little beauties are amazing!

Amethyst deceiver

Laccaria amethystina does not typically get good reviews regarding its edibility. Most sources list it as mediocre, or even hardly worthwhile. It's true that it's a rather small mushroom, with fairly tough texture and not very distinctive taste. However, it is very special for me. Its taste may not be great, but I love it for the fact that it presents a mushroom hunter with a serious challenge. And for its colour, of course. But challenge still comes first.

Now, anyone can identify and pick ceps. They are very large, highly visible mushrooms that you can't miss. Chanterelles are a bit more tricky because they are smaller, and in autumn the leaves of birch, their favourite tree, take on the same colour, and therefore looking for them a bit more difficult.

Amethyst deceivers take the challenge up a few notches. Considering their bright purple colour, you might think that it's not a big deal, but spotting their fruit bodies on beech leaf litter is next to impossible, partly due to their small size, but mostly because in the tree shade the brown of leaves and the purple of mushrooms don't look at all different.

So, if you managed to bring back home a crop of these beauties, you can call yourself an expert mushroom hunter. And how to cook them? Come back tomorrow to find out!

Image credit:

Laccaria amethystina 

Forest gems

Late September is the end of mushroom season in Scotland, so when setting out on my usual route this Sunday I wasn't expecting much to put into my basket. On a day like that it hardly matters though: the walk would have been rewarding even without any finds. Sunshine, gentle wind, the smell of heated pine needles, a few mosquitoes... OK, mosquitoes were not a welcome thing, but that's what insect repellent is for, right?

For the first couple of hours, I was only finding false chanterelles, lots of them. Very fine specimens, though:

If only it were real! Note the crowded forked gills that distinguish this fungus from the true chanterelle.

I could have picked hundreds of them, but alas - they are quite inedible, although not bad-looking, I must admit.

Then, finally something to put into my basket. Nearly stepped on it!

Small, but firm and maggot-free

An hour later, a nice find on a mossy forest path. I'm not greatly excited by brown birch boletes, but so late in the mushroom year, attitudes change.

No time to be fussy! Get into the basket, my friend.

On the final stretch, the path took me through an ancient beech wood, where the leaf litter layer was so thick that it was like walking on a mattress. And there I found them! Several hundreds of fresh, shiny, purple amethyst deceivers, Laccaria amethystina. Also, a few true chanterelles mixed up with them as a bonus, and a small cep, too!

Gem of the woods: extraordinary colour (and yes, it is edible)

I'll write more about these beautiful fungi later this week. They made my day!

The complete crop: top left - brown birch boletus; top - two slippery jacks; right - a couple of hundred of amethyst
deceivers; centre - saffron milk cap (sadly, all maggoty despite to good looks); bottom - golden chanterelles;
bottom left - two ceps. An excellent haul, considering the timing. Cooking report coming up!