Mushrooms in the Great Wild Wood

Wood Mushrooms, Agaricus silvaticus

Cleaned, trimmed and ready to go. Wood mushrooms, Agaricus silvaticus

Gday again!

Lovely conditions of late for all kinds of things to sprout. I found a beaut little patch by my house that was absolutely loaded with edible mushrooms and very healthy looking Milk Thistle plants.

Now, I know a lot of people are wary of wild mushrooms, and fair enough. Although wild mushroom harvesting is probably on average less dangerous than table tennis the new picker has good reason to be cautious. Until you are VERY familiar with a species, mistakes can be made. Usually these result in a nasty case of indigestion, gastric irritation etc but death can occur as well.

If you want to learn about mushrooms, be sure to start off with the most common species, and learn very early how to tell the apart from likely look-a-likes.

Enough nagging. These awesome little guys are Wood Mushrooms, aka Agaricus silvaticus. They smell and taste much like the standard culinary mushroom, or "field mushroom", but with a somewhat scaly looking cap often flushed pink/red in fresh young specimens. Spore print will be a rich purple-brown, gills should be pale pink on young specimens and a rich brown in older ones. Damaged caps and stems placed on white paper will often "bleed" a faint red liquid into the paper. There is often a very thin, fragile "ring" high up on the stem, and a swollen base is common too.

These were sprouting happily from disturbed ground after moderate rainfall, under some lillypilly and lantana of all things.

The nearest local lookalike is the Green Gills, aka Chlorophyllum molybdites, easy ID'd by the greenish tinge to the gills, a rank smell and a generally horrible appearance.

When trying any mushroom for the first time or two, even a common edible species I advise that you just eat a small amount, always cooked, and see how you feel later in the day. Some people are allergic to certain edible mushroom, while other people can eat them by the bagfull and end up with nothing worse than sauce all down the front of their shirt!

After being thoroughly ID'd, trimmed, dusted and wiped over with a damp cloth I went the traditonal route and chopped em, tossed in a pan with olive oil and pepper and served on hot buttered toast. Delicious! So much more character than the plain old store bought mushie and I easily gathered nearly two kilos of fresh specimens within an area barely 3 metres across.

There are many excellent mushroom ID resources and forums online if you want to start learning. Grow kits and mini farms can be had at fairly reasonable prices too. You will often find that tossing and old mushroom kit into your lawn or veggie patch will lead to them becoming permanent residents for free. Well, nearly permanent - about as long as it takes you to pull the up and make some mushroom gravy for your roast beef and potatoes!

Remember, do your research before tucking in. But with proper guidance anyone can learn to reliably ID a handful of the most common edible species.

Happy hunting and have fun foraging!
Aaron