Woodland Mushrooms in Autumn

hey welcome to uk wild crafts so just come to explore this bit of woodland in the y valley in south wales and just see what sort of mushrooms are growing here and i thought at the same time i'll do a video on the the autumn woodland mushrooms so i'll be including all the edible non-edible and toxic ones okay here's my first mushroom of the day and this is porcelain fungus this is a nice edible mushroom it doesn't look it's all horrible and slimy on the top it is actually a very nice mushroom this only grows on beach so although i can't see the bark because it's covered in moss i can pretty much guarantee this is a beach tree there's a couple of nice young ones here you can see where it gets its name porcelain fungus from because the cap is white and shiny and looks just like porcelain the gills of white and add nate or join to the stem and the gills are quite distant as well there's quite a lot of space between them and you'll get quite a fragile ring on the stem though this comes off as it matures and you'll see the stem is whiter above the ring so the the cups are convex when they're younger and they flatten out as they mature and they're a good edible mushroom i don't usually eat the stems because they're a bit too tough and fibrous so i'll either discard the stems or use them in a stock the caps i'll just uh wash off the slime just uh just with a cloth just sort of like wipe it off you don't want to like soak the mushrooms in water because they will take on all that water and they won't be very nice then yeah i just i just like these fried up in a bit of butter quite tasty there's some older specimens here and you see how the the caps have started to flatten out another good idea feature is these mushrooms they'll always grow with the the caps pretty much horizontal to the tree even if they're sticking out the side the stems will curl round and up so that the cap is horizontal so this is a class this is a good beginner mushroom because it's there's not really anything that you'll confuse this with it's growing on beach you see here this is this is definitely beach yeah as long as it's got like the white cap and it's got a slimy top grown on beach you can't really mistake this for anything else they do usually grow in really large clusters i don't often see them in a few like this but you can see here there's been quite a few others that have already been gone so just notice growing right next to the porcelain fungus some beach jelly discs as far as i know they're toxic but i don't think i'd want to eat them anyway to be honest this is a crested coral fungus they really stand out against the leaf litter they are apparently edible though i've never tried one myself i only ever find them in small amounts so i don't really want to take them and they're so small they don't really seem worth bothering with they're nice looking little fungus this is a clouded agaric colitis cyber nebularis this mushroom has disputed edibility it used to be classed as an edible mushroom but apparently it can make some people quite ill it's a very common mushroom and it will grow in pretty much any type of woodland from around mid autumn through winter and you'll see it growing in troops or fairy rings near the bases of trees the caps are convex and then they flatten with age and they have a dark grayish color a bit like storm clouds and the the margin is enrolled especially when younger and the gills are a palish white to cream color they're crowded and they're slightly current which means they run slightly down the stem the stems are off-white and slightly bulbous at the base and the flesh is white and fairly firm this one's been quite well eaten up by maggots or slugs here's one i'm always happy to find this is one of the best edibles we get in the uk in my opinion probably after the sep or penny bun this is the hedgehog fungus and they grow in woodlands from the roots of beech birch and pine in this case from beech they have a cream to pinkish color cup which is often misshapen and uneven so this is an absolute beginner edible mushroom because underneath of the mushroom instead of having gills it has spines which makes it a very clear identifier so as long as the mushroom is growing out of the ground and has a pale color and it has the spines underneath then it's definitely a hedgehog fungus and the spines rub off quite easily with your finger it's best to remove them before cooking the stem is quite thick and often not central to the cap and these mushrooms often grow in fairy rings that be very easy to miss in amongst the dark browns of the leaf litter but these little mushrooms here are amethyst deceivers they're lovely little edible mushrooms you see there a nice purple color all over and they keep their color when they're cooked they're not particularly tasty they don't really taste of anything but they add nice color to foods important thing is the the gills are also purple just beware of the fiber cup which will have a purple coloring cut but the gills will be brown they are poisonous so just make sure it has the purple gills and also another id feature is with the gills there will be some smaller gills that only go about half of the distance to the cup in amongst the longer girls see that there so here's a mushroom i was expecting to see on my walk this is a honey fungus you see the caps are quite convex when younger and then they flatten out with age sometimes they have a concentric pattern of scales on the cap this one doesn't really have it although if you look in the center of the cup you do have some scales there the edge of the cup can go quite wavy and have striations and the gills start off a white color just off white and then go yellow and they are add next to current so they're attached to the stem and they are slightly decurrent so you'll see they're just slightly running down the stem on the stem you have quite a large ring which is very high up the stem and it can look almost like a double ring honey fungus is a very common mushroom i find it on pretty much any woodland walk in the autumn especially in a deciduous woodland they're a parasitic fungi and the fact that it's growing on this tree means it's pretty much definitely a goner so honey fungus are edible but they do need to be cooked very well they can cause stomach upsets in some people i don't really eat them myself i'm not a big fan of honey fungus i'll eat them sometimes but as i said need to be cooked very well otherwise they can be very hard to digest here's a nice flush of sulfur tuft mushrooms a very common poisonous mushroom that you'll find growing in most types of woodlands growing out of dead or living wood so the cups have a sulfurous yellow color they're darker towards the center and lighter towards the margin and the gills on younger ones like this are a whitish yellow color and as they mature they'll go almost olive green sort of color so if you were to come here at night and shine a uv light on these mushrooms they would glow in the dark and it's thought that that is because most insects see in ultraviolet light so it attracts the insects to come and crawl all over the mushrooms and that helps them disperse their spores this is a magpie ink cap magpie in cups grow in beech woodland you can't really mistake them for anything else they've got a very distinct white and black cup unlike the shaggy ink cap they shouldn't be consumed as they are poisonous as they mature the cap will open up and the gills will turn black and the whole mushroom will basically melt into a black liquid which you can use as an ink these are sheathed wood tuft they are edible but they're probably one of the most dangerous mushrooms to forage just for the fact they look very similar to the deadly funeral bell mushroom so i highly recommend that you don't pick these to eat unless you're very familiar with the funeral bell one of the main differences between the two is these the sheathed wood tuft you'll see they grow in really dense clusters whereas the funeral belt doesn't it just grows individually out of the wood and another very important point is the if you look at the cap of the mushroom you see it has like an umbo and the bump in the center and that is lighter in color than the rest of the cup and these mushrooms the sheathed wood tuft they dry from the center out so they'll be lighter in the center darker on the outside whereas the funeral bell is the opposite they dry from the outside so they'll be lighter on the outside of the cap and darker in the center that's one of the main differences so yeah it's a very risky mushroom to forage unless you're 100 sure sheaf wood tough can be found pretty much all year round but they are much more common in the autumn and you'll find them on growing on dead wood of deciduous trees in quite dense clusters and pretty much every time that i've seen these mushrooms they're growing in amongst moss so the gills of this mushroom are quite a pale yellow to start and then becoming a sort of reddish brown with age and the gills are very crowded and also the gills are adenate which means they are attached to the stem sometimes on the stem you'll have a ring but they're very delicate and they come off very easily and above where that ring is the stem is smoother and lighter in color and then below this ring the stem is rough and scaly and it gets darker towards the base again i highly recommend you don't pick these mushrooms to consume unless you're really sure you can id them with 100 accuracy just keep them as a mushroom to look at rather than eat it's not worth risking your life when there's much easier and safer mushrooms out there to pick these are stump puff balls they were called lycoperdon pyroform but i believe they've changed the binomial now i'll check on that but yeah they're a bit smaller than the common puffball and they grow in quite dense clusters as well whereas common puffballs will grow like singularly these will grow in clusters and out of dead wood and roots also you'll see the kind of pear-shaped so these are a good edible this is probably the mushroom that i eat the most of just because they grow everywhere they're really common and they're quite nice they don't really have much of a flavor but they uh they take on flavor like tofu does just uh marinate it in different sources and it takes on that flavor and you'll see it's got a nice white flesh that's really important it's got to be white and firm as they mature that flesh will start getting yellow and then brown and it will turn into spores and it can give you a bad stomach if you eat it like that and also you can uh confuse these with earth balls but again as long as the flash is white earth balls have a black flesh so well like a brown or black flesh so just make sure it's white and firm i'll take a few of these home for dinner you want the younger ones like this when they get bigger they get quite eaten by slugs and this is a common puffball like a purdon perlatum and the polartum means pearly which refers to these warts on the top they brush off quite easily these are edible as long as the flesh is white and firm [Applause] this is candle snuff fungus you'll find it growing all year but especially in autumn and winter and it'll be growing out of dead deciduous wood or roots so it forms these little black spikes sometimes they branch into antlers and they're black with a white tip and it gets its name because it releases its spores it won't do it now because it's been raining quite heavily the last few days but it collects spores and when you tap them the spores release and it looks like smoke being released out as if like a candle being snuffed here's another nice easy edible fungus for beginners this is the jelly ear or wood air and yes they are edible i know they don't really look it but they're actually quite nice so they are always growing on elder you can tell it's elder because it's a really light colored wood and they're in cups that are always facing down you see they're never facing up some people can confuse these with uh some of the pizza species which aren't edible but as long as they're facing down like that then it's okay so i'm going to take a few of these and take them home for dinner and you see they really do look like ears sometimes they're quite nice dried i usually take them home and dehydrate them and they go really really quite small and then you can just use them in like soups and stuff they're quite a good thickening agent and you can also just cut them up fresh like really thinly sliced and use them in stir fries apparently they use them in asian cooking quite a lot in like stir-fries it has a nice ear you can't find them all year round uh late autumn to winter is the time that you're most likely to find them and yeah always on elder if you're into bushcraft these are a very useful mushroom to learn basically if you find dead birch wood in autumn you're almost guaranteed to find these these are birch polypore so you can see there's quite a few birch polypore grown all along this dead birch they're a bracket fungi so they grow out at 90 degree angle from the wood underneath they don't have gills they have paws really tiny paws where they release the spores from so there's quite a lot of uses from this mushroom first of all it is edible a lot of books will class it as inedible and that's because it's not really palatable as it is it needs to be cut down and dried for use in tea or you can uh dry it and powder it for use in like stocks and soups and things like that it's got a lot of medicinal uses as well it can also be used for making fire you can dry it to a powder and it can be used as a tinder um it's also used for sharpening knives if you cut it into strips and dry it then it's pretty much the best thing that you can use for sharpening a knife another name for it is the razor strop fungus because it's really really good at honing a blade you

Channel: UK Wildcrafts

Views: 41,514

Keywords: Mushrooms, woodland Mushrooms, fungi, fungus, mushrooms in autumn, mushrooms in fall, September, august, October, November, uk mushrooms, foraging, difference between poisonous and edible mushrooms, edible mushrooms, picking mushrooms, sulphur tuft, hedgehog fungus, amethyst deceiver, candlesnuff, Autumn foraging, Foraging uk, foraging USA, Foraging England, English mushrooms, Porcelain fungus, Edible or poisonous mushrooms, Birch polypore, wood ear

Id: P0agytd49yo

Length: 27min 24sec (1644 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 03 2021