Better to be safe than sorry if planning to feast on Mayo summer mushrooms

COUNTRYFILE

THAT sudden blast of summer sunshine warmed the ground enough to bring a flush of summer mushrooms into view.

The first I found were two large Russula species, neither of which appear remotely edible. The blackening Russula was the first to raise its head along a grassy verge.

This powerful fungi grows beneath the surface before forcing its way out of the ground.

Initially white, it soon begins to live up to its name and starts to blacken.

The darker the cap becomes, the worse the flavour of this large and meaty mushroom. But catch them as soon as they appear and fry them up that very morning and you have a worthy addition to a good fry up.

A close relative of this is the milk-white Russula, which shares the same habit of popping up pretty much fully grown.

Again, this is a large mushroom, though not quite as chunky as its blackening cousin.

A single specimen would be enough for a meal on its own, although perhaps the insipid flavour would likely make you wonder why you are bothering.

But free food is always worth experimenting with.

Now for a word of caution. Most of us will have heard of oyster mushrooms. Perhaps we have bought them either fresh from the greengrocer or dried from the supermarket.

And maybe we have enjoyed them so much we have become determined to find them in the wild.

A friend gave me a call last week. 'Oysters!', he proclaimed. 'I found them! I told you they were here, and now I know for sure.'

Well, I just had to go and see. We walked to the woods together and poked our way through the undergrowth until he gave an excited shout. 'Found them! Come and look!'

And there on the bole of a long-dead and decomposing tree were what certainly looked like one of our most prized edible wild fungi.

Yet I wasn't really sure they were the ones we wanted. I cut some from the tree in order to examine them more closely. The shape was right, as was the colour. The smell was hard to distinguish - but my post-Covid nose is unreliable.

The problem is this; there is another kind of mushroom with a similar growth habit that shares the same habitat. Angel wings is its name.

Until recently this was also considered edible and good. Then, a few years ago, two instances of mass poisoning occurred after people added angel wings to their evening meal.

In the worst instance nearly 60 people became sick, 17 of which subsequently died.

Symptoms of sickness only began to appear about 10 days after ingestion of the offending fungi, and the first death was more than a week after that.

That took place in Japan, and every other fatality attributed to angel wings has also occurred in Asia.

Before that, this mushroom was widely eaten throughout much of the northern hemisphere.

I spent an hour trying to positively identify the specimens we brought home, and in the end just gave up and threw them away. I suspect I had summer oysters in my hand, and if I am correct then I've missed out on some fine feasting.

But we are better safe then sorry. The same must go for any kind of fungi. If we aren't absolutely sure what it is we are looking at, we just don't take the chance.

There are still enough delicious types out there, ones we cannot confuse with any other.

And in the hedgerow, right outside my home, I found the first summer bolete. Big and fat and round and very, very tasty, it more than made up for our previous disappointment.