Winter honey mushrooms. Winter mushrooms photo and description. When and where can you collect winter mushrooms in the Moscow region?

Sometimes during the mushroom season, dubious specimens end up in mushroom pickers’ baskets, which cause confusion among novice pickers.

False honey mushrooms are sometimes very similar to, they grow in similar conditions and their fruiting period is at the same time.

Types of mushrooms

The favorite place of settlement is on tree stumps. It is because of this that they were nicknamed honey mushrooms (popularly called honey mushrooms).

In total, more than 30 species of honey mushrooms are known, of which 22 species have been studied and described in detail. However, this has more scientific than practical significance.

Usually only 3 types of edible honey mushrooms are collected, known to any mushroom picker:

• summer honey mushrooms;
• autumn honey mushrooms;
• winter mushrooms.

And among the false mushrooms, the following are worthy of attention:

• seroplate (edible);
• brick-red (conditionally edible);
• sulfur-yellow (poisonous).

This deadly mushroom is often confused with the summer mushroom.

Indeed, it can be quite difficult to distinguish them. Sometimes this can only be done in the form of a spore. Therefore, it is not recommended to collect summer honey fungus on stumps and remains of coniferous trees.

Autumn honey mushrooms and galerina are not at all similar in appearance. The autumn honey fungus is more substantial, it has a thick leg covered with scales and flakes, thick flesh and a round scaly cap. Such honey mushrooms grow in large colonies, while Galerina is a solitary species.

The winter honey fungus bears fruit at a completely different time than the fringed galerina and is almost never confused with it. In isolated cases, it was found among colonies of edible honey fungus during warm winters.

Signs of edible honey mushrooms

In order not to confuse edible fungi with poisonous ones, it is useful to remember the following differences:

1. The most noticeable sign is that twin honey mushrooms do not have a membranous ring on their stem, a remnant of a protective blanket.
2. The cap of a real honey mushroom has a creamy-brown or yellowish-ocher color, while false honey mushrooms always come in richer tones: from yellow to reddish-brown.
3. The cap is covered with small light scales, while the false ones have smooth caps. The exception is large specimens of real mushrooms; as they age, they often lose their scales.
4. The plates at the bottom of the cap of edible honey mushrooms are usually light and yellowish. And false ones can be bluish, gray or olive-black.
5. Edible honey mushrooms have a pleasant mushroom smell, while false mushrooms have a musty, earthy smell, sometimes quite pungent and persistent.

Take note: The main condition for safe mushroom picking is caution and prudence.

Don’t get excited when you see delicious colonies of mushrooms. You should calmly inspect them, and if in doubt, it is better not to risk it.

How to recognize false mushrooms in the forest, see the following video:

Taxonomy:

• Division: Basidiomycota (Basidiomycetes)
• Subdivision: Agaricomycotina (Agaricomycetes)
• Class: Agaricomycetes (Agaricomycetes)
• Subclass: Agaricomycetidae (Agaricomycetes)
• Order: Agaricales (Agaric or Lamellar)
• Family: Physalacriaceae (Physalacriaceae)
• Genus: Flammulina (Flammulina)
• View: Flammulina velutipes (Winter honey fungus)

Other names for the mushroom:

Other names:

• Flammulina

• Flammulina velvetypodiaceae

• Collibia velvety-footed

• Collybia velutipes

Winter honey fungus(lat. Flammulina velutipes) is an edible mushroom of the Ryadovaceae family (the genus Flammulina is also classified as a non-gnus mushroom).

External description

Hat: At first, the cap of the winter mushroom has the shape of a hemisphere, then it is spread out and yellow-brown or honey-colored. In the center the surface of the cap is darker in color. In wet weather - mucous. Adult winter mushrooms are often covered with brown spots.

Pulp: watery, cream-colored with a pleasant aroma and taste.

Records: infrequent, adherent, cream-colored, becoming darker with age.

Spore powder: white.

Leg: cylindrical in shape, the upper part of the stem is the same color as the cap, the lower part is darker. 4-8 cm long. up to 0.8 cm thick. Very tough.

Spreading

Winter honey fungus (Flammulina velutipes) is found in late autumn and early winter. Grows on dead wood and stumps, prefers deciduous trees. Under favorable conditions, it can bear fruit throughout the winter.

Similarity

During the fruiting period, when there is already snow, the winter honey fungus (Flammulina velutipes) cannot be confused with another species, since at this time nothing else grows. At other times, winter honey fungus can be mistaken for some other type of tree destroyer, from which it differs in the white color of the spore powder and in that it does not have a ring on the stem. - a mushroom of questionable food quality, distinguished by a red-brown cap, the stem is reddish-red, often twisted, and strongly tapers at the bottom; usually found on the roots of old oak trees.

Edibility

A good edible mushroom.

Video about the mushroom Winter honey fungus:

Notes

According to many, the mushroom season ends in September, but a true mushroom picker knows that at the crossroads of autumn and winter, the time for delicious winter mushrooms comes. Winter honey fungus (Flammulina vlutipes) is a fairly common tree fungus in the southern regions of Russia. The fungus has one interesting feature - its cells, destroyed during freezing, grow together again and are restored as soon as the air temperature rises above zero. Therefore, during winter thaws, you can sometimes see flammulina caps peeking right out from under the snow.
In addition, the winter mushroom is tamed quite quickly. Moreover, when growing flammulina in a dark, cold and damp basement, the result is a softer and tastier mushroom. The Japanese call flammulina enokitake - noodle mushroom.

Winter honey fungus (Flamulina velvetypodia) is a good edible mushroom of the Flamullina genus and the Ryadovkov family.

External characteristics

Hat: the winter honey fungus initially has a hemispherical hat, after which it opens and acquires a honey or dark brown hue. The center of the cap becomes darker. If the weather is predominantly humid, the cap becomes slimy. Winter adults have dark brown spots.

Pulp: creamy, delicate color, watery with a delicate and pleasant taste and aroma.

Plates: cream-colored, adherent, not frequent, gradually darken with age. The mycelium of winter honey fungus has a white tint.

Leg: has a cylindrical shape, in the upper part the tone matches the tone of the cap, at the bottom the tone is darker. The length of the leg is from 4 to 8 centimeters, thickness – up to 0.8 centimeters. The leg has an increased level of rigidity.

Spreading

When to collect and where to grow? Winter mushrooms are found from late autumn until the onset of severe winter cold. The place of growth is stumps and fallen rotten trees. Most often found in deciduous forests. If conditions are favorable, mushrooms can grow throughout the winter. They are unpretentious to grow, they just need moist and cool air.

Similarity

During the period when snow appears, winter honey fungus is quite difficult to confuse with other varieties, since at this time nothing else grows. During late autumn, winter mushrooms can be confused with other types of tree destroyers. How to distinguish? The difference that makes the mushroom cap white is the white spore powder, as well as the presence of rings on the stem. Hummingbird spindlefoot (false honey fungus in winter) - a mushroom of questionable nutritional quality with a red-brown cap and a red-red stalk twisted at the bottom, can be found on old oak stumps.

Calorie content

Winter honey fungus flammulin has a low level: per 100 grams of product there are 22 kilocalories. Winter honey mushrooms have the following energy value: per 100 grams of product - 2 grams, 1 gram and 0.5 grams.

Beneficial features

The beneficial properties of mushrooms from the honey mushroom family are familiar to many. Winter mushrooms perfectly support the vital functions of the entire body, filling it with essential minerals and vitamins. The product in its chemical composition contains a large amount of... This product, when used correctly, can help cope with many diseases of different etymologies and even vitamin deficiency and chronic fatigue.

Regularly adding winter honey mushrooms to your diet will help reduce the likelihood of developing cancer.

For men, one of the most important reasons for using this product is its positive effect on potency.

Use in cooking

Autumn and winter honey mushrooms have a very pleasant, tender flesh, light aroma and delicate taste. They are often used for pickling and pickling. They can also be boiled or fried with the addition of sauces and vegetables. Honey mushrooms are added to soups, vegetable stews, salads, and snacks. It is important to remember that before you start cooking these mushrooms, you need to completely remove the dark edges from the caps, as they will add bitterness. This is a universal product and can be added to any dish - it all depends on taste preferences.

Chefs like to add honey mushrooms to the filling of pies and meat rolls, thus giving the dish a light and interesting taste. Chefs use winter mushrooms with caution, since during cooking mucus forms on them, and although it does not affect the taste of the dishes, it does affect their appearance.

Benefits and treatment

It is worth noting the enormous benefits of winter mushrooms. People from northern countries have long used this product to treat anemia, lung diseases, viral diseases, and they have also been used as an incredible natural powerful tonic. Thanks to the chemical composition rich in vitamins, the product supports the state of the immune system and the functioning of the entire body as a whole. Honey mushrooms contain polysaccharides that block the development of malignant cancer cells.

Decoctions, infusions and mushroom extracts restore blood pressure, have a positive effect on the condition of the circulatory system and strengthen the heart muscle.

Harm

To date, the harm that winter mushrooms can cause to the body has not been determined. They have no poisonous counterparts in winter, since other mushrooms simply do not grow during this period of time. Yes, there are several warnings for using this product: they should not be added to children’s diets, consumed in moderation in old age, and not consumed if you have allergic reactions.

Primary processing and preparation

How to cook? The collected winter mushrooms must first be thoroughly washed and boiled (this removes all the sand and dirt from the mushroom). After the honey mushrooms have been boiled, you can begin to cook them directly. This process takes 20 minutes. They can be fried, stewed, baked. At the end of cooking, you can add some breadcrumbs to the dish. In order to preserve the product for a long period of time, after boiling the mushrooms need to be dried and placed in the freezer, either pickled or dried.

It is worth remembering that the marinating process must be hot. The caps need to be boiled twice in different containers, then they are placed in a jar and poured with hot marinade with spices. The jar is quickly rolled up and left for at least 3 weeks. You can also dry salt them. Boiled and dried mushrooms should be dried, placed in a jar, sprinkled thoroughly with salt, and rolled up. There are many recipes for dishes using winter mushrooms; you can also use your imagination, since the mushroom is universal and goes well with the most unpredictable foods.

Taxonomy:

• Division: Basidiomycota (Basidiomycetes)
• Subdivision: Agaricomycotina (Agaricomycetes)
• Class: Agaricomycetes (Agaricomycetes)
• Subclass: Agaricomycetidae (Agaricomycetes)
• Order: Agaricales (Agaric or Lamellar)
• Family: Physalacriaceae (Physalacriaceae)
• Genus: Flammulina (Flammulina)
• View: Flammulina velutipes (Winter mushroom)

Other names for the mushroom:

Other names:

• Flammulina

• Flammulina velvetypodiaceae

• Collibia velvety-footed

• Collybia velutipes

(lat. Flammulina velutipes) is an edible mushroom of the Ryadovaceae family (the genus Flammulina is also classified as a non-gnus mushroom).

External description

Hat: At first, the cap of the winter mushroom has the shape of a hemisphere, then it is spread out and yellow-brown or honey-colored. In the center the surface of the cap is darker in color. In wet weather - mucous. Adult winter mushrooms are often covered with brown spots.

Pulp: watery, cream-colored with a pleasant aroma and taste.

Records: infrequent, adherent, cream-colored, becoming darker with age.

Spore powder: white.

Leg: cylindrical in shape, the upper part of the stem is the same color as the cap, the lower part is darker. 4-8 cm long. up to 0.8 cm thick. Very tough.

Spreading

Winter mushroom (Flammulina velutipes) is found in late autumn and early winter. Grows on dead wood and stumps, prefers deciduous trees. Under favorable conditions, it can bear fruit throughout the winter.

Similarity

During the fruiting period, when there is already snow, the Winter Mushroom (Flammulina velutipes) cannot be confused with another species, since nothing else grows at this time. At other times, the Winter Mushroom can be mistaken for some other type of tree destroyer, from which it differs in the white color of its spore powder and the fact that it does not have a ring on the stem. - a mushroom of questionable food quality, distinguished by a red-brown cap, the stem is reddish-red, often twisted, and strongly tapers at the bottom; usually found on the roots of old oak trees.

Edibility

A good edible mushroom.

Video about the mushroom Winter mushroom:

Notes

According to many, the mushroom season ends in September, but a true mushroom picker knows that at the crossroads of autumn and winter, the time for delicious winter mushrooms comes. Winter mushroom (Flammulina vlutipes) is a fairly common tree fungus in the southern regions of Russia. The fungus has one interesting feature - its cells, destroyed during freezing, grow together again and are restored as soon as the air temperature rises above zero. Therefore, during winter thaws, you can sometimes see flammulina caps peeking right out from under the snow.
In addition, the winter mushroom is tamed quite quickly. Moreover, when growing flammulina in a dark, cold and damp basement, the result is a softer and tastier mushroom. The Japanese call flammulina enokitake - noodle mushroom.

A trip to the forest for honey mushrooms will in any case bring you pleasant emotions, since these mushrooms grow in large families and, having found a suitable tree, you can quickly fill the basket. Collection is carried out almost all year round, since there are many types of these mushrooms, and they can be collected even in winter. But to do this, you need not only to know what edible species look like, but also what rules are used to collect them.

Features and methods of collecting winter, spring and autumn honey mushrooms with photos and videos can be found in this article. It will help experienced mushroom pickers improve their knowledge, and beginners - master the necessary techniques.

With the onset of the first autumn month comes the time to collect honey mushrooms. In conditions of high humidity they grow very quickly. They can be found both in deciduous and mixed forests on stumps and old trees (Figure 1). Although they are small, collecting them is a real pleasure, because they grow in whole families, and you can immediately collect a whole basket of fragrant forest gifts.

Sometimes they are hidden under a layer of fallen leaves, and then it becomes more difficult to find them, but how great is the joy of a mushroom picker who discovers a family growing on a stump. Fans of quiet hunting are well aware of the features, conditions and rules of collection, and beginners will find it useful to familiarize themselves with the materials in this article.

Peculiarities

You should know that various species can be collected almost all year round, except during periods of severe frost. Thus, autumn ones are harvested from August to November, meadow ones - from May to June and from September to October, summer ones bear fruit from August to October, and winter ones - throughout the fall until frost.

Note: You need to look for them in fairly mature deciduous forests, on stumps and trunks of fallen trees, and sometimes on living wood. The exception is meadow, which grow exclusively in open areas among grass. Look for them on forest edges, pastures, fields, and meadows.

When collecting, be careful and remember that along with edible ones, you can also find false ones, some of which are poisonous. To prevent such a specimen from accidentally ending up in your basket, learn to distinguish between real and false specimens (Figure 2).

Here's what you should pay attention to

1. True honey mushrooms grow only on wood, while false ones can also grow on the ground.
2. The caps of false species are painted in bright colors - bright red, greenish-gray, and the plates on their reverse side are dark in color.
3. The main sign of edibility is the leathery ring on the stem under the cap. False ones have fragments of such a ring, but they are difficult to see. In addition, the cap and stem of a real mushroom are covered with scales, which are completely absent in false ones.

In addition, real varieties have a pleasant mushroom aroma, while false varieties have an unpleasant earthy odor.

Conditions

If you want to harvest, go to a forest that is over 30 years old. In such a forest area you can find enough places where honey mushrooms like to grow - rotten stumps, dead trunks, dead wood, protruding tree roots.

When to collect winter and other species? The best time for this is called early morning, since it is then that they are still fresh and dense after the cool of the night, which means they are more resistant to transportation and storage.

Methods

When choosing a collection method, you should give preference to those that protect the mycelium from mechanical damage. Therefore, it is unacceptable to pull out mushrooms, because such actions lead not only to damage to the mycelium, but also to its death, as a result of which growth in this area stops.

It is recommended to carefully cut off the stem with a knife or twist the mushroom from the mycelium. However, with the first method there is a risk of infection entering the mycelium through an incised wound on the leg, so it is better to use the second method. When unscrewing the mushroom, it must be rotated around its axis until it easily separates. The hole remaining after such actions must be trampled or lightly dug in.

Rules

All lovers of “silent hunting”, whether an experienced mushroom picker or a beginner, must follow the following rules (Figure 3):

1. You can collect only well-known species. If you have the slightest doubt about its edibility, you should discard it.
2. It is recommended to select young, healthy mushrooms, because they have the ability to accumulate dangerous toxic substances, and therefore you do not need overgrown, wormy, rotten specimens. It is better to hang it on a branch with the cap down so that the wind can carry and disperse its spores for the future harvest. At the same time, mushrooms that are too young and not yet ripe should not be collected. Leave them to other mushroom pickers.
3. Try not to damage the mycelium. Therefore, it is better to twist the tubular species, and break or cut off the lamellar and marsupial species.
4. If you find an edible mushroom, do not rush to leave this place. Most species grow in whole families, so a careful search can reveal many mushrooms in one place.
5. Remember that mushrooms do not grow in tall grass and windbreaks.
6. When going into the forest, take a basket with you, not a bucket, since mushrooms quickly suffocate in a confined space without ventilation.
7. Before placing your find in the trash bin, clear it of soil and debris. Place them with their caps down or sideways.
8. Don't try to take all the mushrooms from the forest. This is impossible. Raw mushrooms spoil quickly, so they need to be processed quickly.

Do not knock down unfamiliar mushrooms. After all, there may be a mushroom picker who will not only recognize this mushroom, but also pick it up.

Collection of honey mushrooms: video

To learn more about the collection process, we recommend watching the video, which shows where to look for mushrooms, how to distinguish them and collect them correctly.

When to collect winter mushrooms

Most mushrooms are collected in the summer and autumn months. The exception is winter varieties, the harvest of which can be harvested even with the onset of slight cold in December, and in conditions of early and warm spring - in January and March. They appear in the forest in October and can continue to bear fruit until March (Figure 4). It all depends on climatic and weather conditions, since growth stops at temperatures below zero.

It is very difficult to confuse a winter variety with any other species, since most mushrooms do not tolerate cold weather, and with its onset they die off in their above-ground parts, which means they are simply absent.

When to collect spring honey mushrooms

Spring honey mushrooms are an early species. They can be found in both mixed and coniferous forests on old stumps and protruding tree roots, as well as on damp mossy litter from mid-May to the end of October (Figure 5).

The largest harvest can be harvested in June-July, when these mushrooms are especially prolific, and since they grow in the low mushroom season, they attract increased interest from mushroom pickers.

Collection of autumn mushrooms: video

The most popular are autumn varieties. From the video below you will learn how to collect them correctly and what places in the forest you should inspect to find a rich harvest of mushrooms.