Honey FungusArmillaria mellea
Edible only after thorough cookingTraditionally collected in: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Italy
Description
Usually grows in dense clusters on stumps, roots or the base of trees. The cap is honey-brown with fine darker scales. A. mellea normally has a ring on the stem and a white spore print.
Where it grows
On living and dead trees, stumps and buried roots. Across much of western Europe it is better known as a serious tree pathogen than as a food mushroom.
Mainly in autumn, especially during cool, damp weather.
«Honey Fungus — or something like it?»
If the description above leaves you unsure, do not guess from memory and do not compare by eye with a picture off the internet. Our photo identifier shows several likely candidates with percentages, and names the dangerous lookalikes if there are any — rather than one confident answer.
In detail
Season
Fruits from early September to late November.
What to do with it
This species may not be picked (see «Caution» below), so storing and cooking do not belong here. If you find one: photograph it where it stands, do not cut or dig it up, and remember the spot for your own records — the mycelium fruits there year after year.
Take care
Eaten in some parts of Europe, but only after thorough cooking, and it does not agree with everyone. Raw or undercooked Honey Fungus can cause gastrointestinal illness, and some people react even to cooked mushrooms. It is not suitable for inexperienced foragers because other brown mushrooms grow on the same wood, including the deadly Funeral Bell. Do not use a single feature such as the ring to identify it.
This species is easily confused with Galerina marginata — see the lookalikes section below. Pick only what has been confirmed by someone who knows the fungi of your area.
Nothing on this page is an expert opinion, and nothing here confirms that the mushroom you found is edible. Photo identification in this service is a probabilistic hint, not permission to pick or to eat.
Lookalikes
Deadly poisonous, with the same amatoxins as the Death Cap and the same long delay before illness begins.
A photograph cannot settle this pair. Spore colour is what separates them, and a spore deposit is not something a picture shows unless it has already fallen on a cap below and is recognised for what it is. Small brown mushrooms on wood are the class of find where identification from images fails most often, and this is the pair that kills.
Poisonous, causing violent and prolonged vomiting and diarrhoea.
- ·The gills of Sulphur Tuft are sulphur-yellow when young, then greenish, then purple-brown; Honey Fungus has cream to pale flesh-coloured gills that only spot rusty with age.
- ·Honey Fungus normally carries a distinct woolly ring on the stem, whereas Sulphur Tuft has at most a dark fibrous ring zone where the veil left its mark, never a membrane.
- ·Sulphur Tuft is bright yellow to greenish-yellow all over, brightest at the cap margin; Honey Fungus is honey to tawny brown with fine darker scales towards the middle of the cap.
- ·The spore deposit is purple-brown in Sulphur Tuft and white to cream in Honey Fungus, and in a tight clump it shows on the caps lower down.
Check whether this one is out near you
The foraging forecast changes daily — with rainfall, temperature and the phase of the flush, rather than «it ought to be the season».
Your comment
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Updated from the FungRadar species reference · not a specialist's determination