This is one of the most exciting fungi to stumble upon, nestling at the base of pine trees like a cloud of coral. Although uncommon, they tend to recur in established locations, though not necessarily in consecutive years. Firm young specimens are delicious, if laborious to clean, with a firm texture and fungal, nutty flavour. They can grow to enormous sizes…

Finding wild food can be a tricky business. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are, how adept your identification skills are or how in touch you are with your ‘inner forager’: if you get too confident or take them for granted, they will scorn you. I ‘relearned’ this valuable lesson for about the 1000th time a few weekends ago

This is the prettiest and most fragrant of all hedgerow plants, its creamy yellow clouds of tiny flowers (I call them ditch-floss) spreading honey and almond summery scents about the countryside…

The death cap is the most deadly of all fungi, a lethal dose being as little as 20g. What makes it most dangerous is that symptoms do not usually show until 6 – 24 hours after ingestion, and by this time it is often too late for effective treatment. Anyone considering eating wild mushrooms should be able to identify it.

The two questions I get asked most often when guiding fungi forages are ‘Is this edible?’ and ‘What’s the difference between mushrooms and toadstools?
Not so simple…read for the answers, and more questions…