Monday 27 October 2014

Scalycap or honeyfungus, Armillaria mellea?



I saw this bunch of fungi in Norwood Grove on Friday, at first I thought it could be the Scalycap, Pholiota squarrosoides, though it is more of a North American Fungi, failing that an atypical example of the Shaggy ScalycapPholiota squarrosa. The image doesn't do its sulphur yellowness justice, but it is both a sulphury yellow and has triangular shaped scales as befits the textbook description,  it also has pale gills and no distinct odour. First-nature.com describes it as:

"yellow-ochre or straw-yellow; covered in upturned triangular brown scales in more or less concentric rings.Convex at first, the caps flatten with age but retain an in-rolled margin.
The cap flesh is very pale yellow, and it is quite firm."

Some sources say it's easily confused with the bioluminescent (meaning it has gills that glow in the dark!) honeyfungus,  Armillaria mellea, which is admittedly much more common, but these ones don't have markedly dark rings at the centre of the cap, though they may be emerging. Maybe I should go back at night to see if they glow? Apparently they are bad news for the surrounding eco-system, so I hope they are not Honeyfungi. I guess they are more likely to be honeyfungus though.



Having read up on the Shaggy Parasol at length last week, and also noting the red-brown bruising on the batch depicted below, I took the foolish step of frying one in butter and eating it with couscous. It had fallen over so I wasn't breaking my rule of not picking them. But after I ate it (it was tasty but a bit on the gritty side) I then looked on-line and realised in North America, at least, there is a poisonous look-alike. I thought about making myself vomit just in case, but then decided the chances were slim of finding one in the UK, but I wont do that again, not while I know so little. Even the spore tests can be inconclusive for this one, so not worth chancing 6 or so hours of vomiting blood for a fried mushroom!

" young shaggy parasols look identical to the poisonous Chlorophyllum molybdites (the mushroom that causes the most poisonings in North America yearly)."



No comments:

Post a Comment