Boletus erythropus

The season for this is normally late summer to early autumn, however I found one this evening while out hunting for kindling wood.

Most people don't pick this mushroom, since it has the red pores which are normally associated with the (possibly deadly) poisonous Boletus satanas, and the (merely) poisonous Boletus satanoides. However I do, as I suspect do all the commercial fungi collectors who pick the stuff which ends up as dried 'porcini' at Waitrose at £5 for 100g.

Boletus erythropus causes stomach upsets when raw but is edible - and good - when cooked. Hence the reason why shop-bought dried mushrooms must always be thoroughly cooked, since you really don't know what's been sneaked in there under the guise of 'cep'.

Which wild food books?

I get asked quite a lot about which books to use for wild food indentification. Here are my bibles:

1. Roger Phillips Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britain and Europe, ISBN 03302644193. This is the definitive work in my view, the big selling point being the visual key to the main families on pages 10 - 12. It's now out of print, however used copies do appear on Amazon from time to time. Bag one if you can.

2. Roger Phillips Wild Food, ISBN 0330280694. A bit of a 'period piece' this, however the recipe for beech leaf noyau on page 67 is worth the cover price alone.

3. Richard Mabey Food for Free, ISBN-10:0002201593. The seminal work, and more useful for plant identification than Phillips' Wild Food in my opinion, however the two complement one another rather nicely.

4. Antonio Carluccio Complete Mushroom Book, ISBN 1844001636. Actually too far from 'complete' to ever use for identification, however it is a useful source of recipe ideas and inspiration.

Dogshit Park

So what do you do with a fungi find from a location that's used as a doggy toilet, or else otherwise contaminated? Or if you find an example of a prized species that's well past its best?

You could simply leave the fungi to decay in their natural habitat, however I pick them anyway and seed them in more desirable locations - not least because next season, I'll know where to look.

Picking doesn't harm the fungi since what's on the surface is only the fruit: the main body of the plant - the cobwebby mycelium - being underground.

Here's an Agaricus bitorquis I found today in Epsom town centre's notorious 'Dogshit Park':

Agaricus bitorquis is good to eat - it's the wild parent of the cultivated Portabello mushroom.




However this particular example was riddled with worms and not something I'd consider eating, quite apart from where I found it. I've chopped it up and scattered it around the garden, hoping for rain.

Dryad's saddle

An unexpected fungi find while out hunting for kindling wood - it's the size of a tractor seat.


I've picked the smaller, younger one at the top. Fried in butter with a sauce of garlic, sour cream and dill, that did nicely for tonight's supper.

St George's mushrooms

I need to find some of these and fast. My credibility as a wild food enthusiast is at stake here.

Annoyingly - in suburban Surrey - I never have.

Allegedly St George's can first appear up to a week later than 23 April.

I live in hope :-)