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Slovenščina (Slovenian)
Honey mushrooms are extremely popular among mushroom foragers, they are quite common and easy to collect. However, it’s important to know mushrooms well so we don’t confuse them with any poisonous species.
Name: honey mushroom, honey fungus, lat. (Armillaria mellea)
Description: The cap is semicircular and cone-shaped with an inrolled margin in young mushrooms, flattening out in older specimens. It’s 3-10 cm wide, sometimes more, and grooved at the edge when mature. The color changes – in young specimens it’s honey-brown (like honey), later becoming fox-colored and eventually dirty pinkish-brown. It’s covered with darker, square-shaped scales that are denser at the center, but rain can wash them off leaving the cap smooth. The stem is up to 12 cm tall, 1-2 cm in diameter, thickened toward the base and finely hairy. It has a prominent ring in the upper part. The base color is brown, transitioning to yellowish-brown toward the bottom, lighter colored above the ring. The gills are sparse, attached to the stem, initially almost white, later developing a flesh-brown color. The flesh is pale, soft in the cap, but becomes increasingly tough in the stem as it matures. It has a mild, pleasant smell that somewhat resembles fruit and a slightly bitter taste, but this bitterness disappears with cooking. The spore print is white.
Foraging: Honey mushrooms are parasitic fungi that grow on stumps and roots of all types of trees, including fruit trees, in large clusters. We can collect them from August through November, most commonly in October. The mycelial threads weave into thick, root-like cords called rhizomorphs, which help them spread through the tree and, more importantly, transfer from infected to healthy trees. In attacked trunks, they climb high up under the bark and the tree dies. This makes these mushrooms extremely dangerous to plants.
Also commonly appearing in autumn is the dark honey mushroom (Armillaria osoyae), which is a conditionally edible mushroom, suitable for pickling. We recognize it by its brown, scaly cap and whitish ring.
Similar to the honey mushroom is also the bulbous honey mushroom (Armillaria gallica), which has a yellowish-colored ring on the stem, a red to flesh-brown colored cap covered with scales. The same applies as for all honey mushrooms – it’s a conditionally edible mushroom.
What it contains: Honey mushroom is considered a medicinal herb in Asia, containing many bioactive compounds including polysaccharides, proteins, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. It acts as an antioxidant fighting free radicals, inhibits inflammation, lowers blood sugar levels and even helps fight depression.
Use: Honey mushroom is a conditionally edible mushroom – raw it’s somewhat poisonous or at least inedible. It contains protein toxins that are destroyed by cooking. For all types of honey mushrooms, we must boil them for at least 10 minutes in boiling water and discard the water they were cooked in. We also don’t collect them at very low temperatures and after the first frost, as toxins strengthen at low temperatures. Only after cooking can we use them in various dishes. Those growing on deciduous trees are considered more flavorful. Most commonly we pickle them, though they’re also excellent in soups, risottos, with eggs and in pasta sauces. We use only the caps, as the stems are often tough.
Warning:
We must not confuse honey mushrooms with the deadly galerina (Galerina marginata), which is common in our region but deadly poisonous. It grows mainly on spruce stumps, rarely on deciduous trees. It has a thin stem, grooved cap edge of rusty orange color and grows in clusters.
Similarly poisonous and dangerous is the sulfur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare), which also grows in clusters. It’s a common mushroom, growing on both deciduous and coniferous trees. We recognize them by their somewhat convex caps of sulfur-yellow colors, thin, hollow and curved stems of yellow colors, and the flesh is also yellow. The spore-bearing gills are initially yellow, later transitioning to brownish-green color, very dense and attached to the stem.
Interesting facts:
- This species was first described by Martin Vahl in 1970 and included in the genus of agarics, naming it Agaricus mellea, it was transferred to honey mushrooms in 1871 by Paul Kummer and received the scientific name Armillaria mellea.
- It’s considered an ancient remedy in traditional Chinese medicine, mainly used for treating various neurological conditions such as headaches, dizziness, insomnia, even epilepsy.
- The name comes from the Latin word Armilla, meaning bracelet, and Melleus, meaning honey, due to the honey-like color.
- Despite cooked honey mushroom being considered edible, people with sensitive stomachs cannot tolerate it and it causes digestive problems for them.
- The damage these mushrooms cause is also great because they grow in masses and spread relatively quickly from infected to healthy trees. Often quite a large area is covered with honey mushrooms.
- Their ideal environment is sparse forests, clearings, often growing where trees have been cut down, along paths, ditches, canals, even in fields. We find them less often in darker forests, as they prefer bright and sunny environments.
