In these notes I would like to talk about my findings and discoveries. Location – Kharkov, deciduous forest. If suddenly I will be brought into a pine tree, I will definitely indicate this separately. Our forest is small, fairly trampled down by all categories of vacationers, from mothers with children and dog lovers to cyclists. And there are also fans to drive quadrocopters and ride horses. But still, this forest never ceases to amaze and delight. Last year, there were especially many quiet discoveries: for the first time in our lives, my husband and I found a yellow blackberry and our first umbrella vulture. This year also started very promisingly… But first things first.
March this year was strange: warm and sunny at the beginning of the month, everything promised a swift spring, then it got cold and rainy, the temperature at night fell below zero. Only towards the end of the month it began to seem that spring would still come.
2 April. The first sunny day after a gray and gloomy March, and we went for a walk, admire the lush flowering of snowdrops (which are not snowdrops, but blue spells). There are several places where there are so many blueberries that they form a solid blue carpet. You look and remember “I look into the blue lakes …” I, of course, had a secret idea to find some early spring mushrooms. Not for gastronomic purposes, but only to take pictures. There was even a rough list of what I want: microstomy (for photos for the article); sarcoscif – take a picture and try it, I have never held it in my hands before; morels-lines, because I also never held them in my hands; well, from non-spring ones – common slit-leaf, exclusively for photographs for the article.
First find:
At first, it seemed to me from afar that it was something that had overwintered in general (when we went for such a walk in March, there was still snow in the forest in some places, I found a thawed goblet talker, which looked surprisingly good). But upon closer examination, it turned out that these mushrooms were by no means last year’s, but completely fresh, there are young ones, they all look great. And it turns out I have no idea what it is! Other photos, more detailed, here: https://wikigrib.ru/raspoznavaniye-gribov-39809/
Literally a few steps from this clearing, on the side of the clearing, about twenty centimeters from the traveled track, I look – as if acorn caps are lying around. I looked – wow! Yes, those are mushrooms! Small neat saucers:
And these saucers turned out to be knobbly Dumontini.
The third mushroom at first seemed very banal to me:
Until this year, we never went mushroom picking in April. I know about all spring species only theoretically. Therefore, I took the mushroom home (it was only one, I looked around and didn’t find anything, it’s small, although it looks huge in the photo, in fact, it’s only 7 centimeters in height and the width of the hat is no more than 6 centimeters at its widest point), I didn’t take it from gastronomic considerations, but with the idea of studying properly. I cut it, of course, and was amazed: a tick lurked in the folds.
Of course, I’m not an expert, maybe it’s some kind of mushroom-eating mite that is indifferent to warm-blooded ones, but the last couple of years there have been an incredible number of ticks. I immediately imagined: you come home with mushrooms, take a shower, spin for half an hour in front of the mirror, checking if anyone has caught on, then you start processing mushrooms, and these infections are just waiting for this!
6 April. Warm, up to +15 and even up to +18 during the day and not lower than +5 at night, there was no rain since the last walk. Scilla snowdrops continue to bloom, but the blue carpet is no longer blue, but blue-violet: Corydalis has bloomed en masse, lungwort is blooming. In some places, yellow spots begin to appear: buttercup anemone blooms.
The list of “wishlists” has not decreased much since the last walk. The first thing that the forest gave me when we stopped for a smoke break was an inconspicuous twig lying not far from the makeshift bench: there were light small mushrooms on the twig. Picked it up, flipped it over, and… Yyessss!!! You are my handsome! Common slit leaf:
They visited a clearing where, last time, presumably tubaria grew in abundance – and did not find a single one. It is unlikely that they decomposed so quickly, most likely they were collected. On the occasion of the working day, the forest was practically deserted, there were rare dog walkers and a flock of cyclists. From a distance they saw a lady with a dog. The lady was obviously collecting something in a small package. It was inconvenient to approach and look in: what if the dog (a half-breed of the East European Shepherd Dog) decides that we are encroaching on the mistress’s prey. It didn’t have to be mushrooms, it could be nettles, dandelions or other herbs for borscht-salad, and pensioners also willingly pick snowdrops to sell them at the entrance to the subway.
There were many lines. A lot of. Young, pretty. She came up, looked at it – is it a morel? — no, alas. Covered with leaves, let them grow. There were many brown “saucers” – dumontini. That’s really – a shaft! There were an incredible number of caps from Coca-Cola, red ones, from plastic bottles. At some point, I got tired of running to every red spot. And then – a step away from the path, I look, it blushes from under the withered leaves. Blushing brightly, defiantly. I grab my husband by the sleeve – well, tell me, tell me that this is not Coca-Cola!
Bright, in the sun of a completely unnatural, some kind of unnatural color, even now, in the spring, when everything is in bloom in the forest, it looks like something absolutely incredible. Truly, something fabulous, an elf cup, scarlet sarcoscif.
I carefully cut off a few pieces of the largest ones, covered the rest with foliage. Plans to visit this place in the coming days. Brought the mushrooms home, cooked: boiled 1 time and fried with onions, salted a little. Delicious. I like dense, crunchy mushrooms, with such an expressive texture. Interestingly, after boiling, the scarlet color faded a little, but did not disappear. And when frying, he completely recovered. In general, summary: good, but not enough. Very little!
And the final gift from the forest on this day: lines. I couldn’t resist posting a couple of pics. He is young and clearly still growing, and out of inexperience, I took him, just like the first one, for a “giant line”: 10 centimeters high, the span of the hat in a wide place is not less than 18 cm. And only after a couple of weeks, having figured out question with the help of local mushroom pickers, I realized that this is a “Beam Stitch”, aka “Pointed”, Gyromitra fastigiata.
I didn’t take it, after the photo shoot I traditionally covered it with leaves. Let it grow, handsome.
10 April. Monday. Chilly. We went out for a short walk, without much hope of finding something: on Sunday, only the lazy one did not visit the forest, barbecue, music, hubbub, mountains of garbage and trampled flower meadows. I’ve been looking at this for years and I’m amazed for years: people, why are you such pigs … It’s sad.
The two line glades known to me were empty, and only at the very exit from the forest, literally ten meters from the asphalt, lines appeared. Loose, many, large. But we didn’t take pictures of them. Take even more so. And, in fact, there was nothing else.
But the forest did not offend me. Brought to this tree:
One mushroom seemed to me a rather interesting shape, like a butterfly, see:
Here it is even closer. There is something mesmerizing about it!
Now I have a question: does the slit leaf grow in the second year? All the slit-leaves that I happened to find were more or less semicircular in shape. And this one seemed to have grown, as it were, “shoots” on the main fruiting body.
April 15 – 18. Uzhgorod. Yes, yes, Uzhgorod, Transcarpathia. It took us there to see the cherry blossoms.
What can I say – it’s awesome! For the sake of this, it was worth shaking more than 25 hours on the train. Here it is, a Japanese cherry that has taken root in our climate:
For comparison, here is our traditional cherry and sakura next to it:
The city was remembered not only for sakura, magnolia bloomed in abundance, they love and grow it there, all three of the most famous varieties, here are two large-flowered ones:
Clean little town, interesting mini-sculptures, interesting cuisine. A beautiful river, forged hearts chained with barn locks “as a sign of eternal love”, an exhibition of Easter eggs, swans on the city pond and a seagull on the lakes. We did not regret that we went. A large photo report on the trip is being prepared, I will post it on my forum, I can give a link.
The general introduction about Uzhgorod can be considered complete, now it’s time to tell you what mushrooms were found right in the city.
Toy railway. Not operational, but not as broken as I imagined from what I read on the net. There are a lot of sawn poplars along the paths, the stumps have not yet decomposed much. Near one of the stumps, dung beetles, two decent-sized families, grew chic. One was in a state so blackened that only one thing could be said about the mushrooms: they were dung beetles. The second beam was, although already in the stage of mass dying, but not yet hopeless. For myself, I defined them as “Flickering dung beetle”:
The children’s railway is laid along the river. And between the track and the river, as it seemed to us, there is a beach area: there is a kind of cabin that looks like a toilet, and obvious changing cabins. Rare companies walk, mostly with dogs. While we were photographing the dung beetles, they paid attention to us, but I would not say that my children are too emotional, almost adult young ladies, students. Perhaps not too abundant tourists are limited to selfies against the backdrop of sakura and Uzhgorod castle?
And on the other side of the same stump, a gray dung beetle grew in splendid isolation.
The historical center of the city, the cobblestone pavement from the Uzhgorod castle. This is the sawmill:
At first, the thought flashed through my mind that it was a scaly, already very dense, rubber-woody leg of the mushroom that I tried to tear out of the general pile. However, I was mistaken, it is more of a brindle.
25 April. The snow has fallen (again). The fact is that immediately after Easter from Uzhgorod, from the abundance of flowers, I returned to winter, as if I had swept in a time machine: Kharkiv was covered with snow. View from the window:
It was pretty cold all week. But then, of course, spring still figured out what the weather should be like at the end of April, it got warmer, it’s time to check how our forest is.
There was a sea of lines, they really endured the cold snap very well. This situation pleased me, since my husband and I persuaded each other that we still want to try to cook them. And it is safer to try them in the cool, since in scientific circles there is an opinion that these mushrooms accumulate poison in the heat. Having received a full and detailed consultation from Sergey in this comment, I was ready for culinary discoveries. Looking ahead, I will say: mushrooms are like mushrooms. Nothing special, quite edible. We didn’t notice any side effects. But, of course, the question of whether it is worth the risk with mushrooms, which have such an unstable reputation, everyone must decide for himself, and this issue must be approached with all responsibility. Do not listen to your neighbors and do not believe the tales on the Internet in the style of “You can use henna with buckets! We almost eat them raw! If you decide to try something so dubious, carefully study the question.
I found a clearing of tubaria (Tubaria bran). They were young, small, not the same as they met for the first time, and I was amazed how much in this color they really look like a bordered galerina.
I met a lonely and sad gray dung beetle, sticking out almost right on the clearing, with all his appearance demonstrating independence and unwillingness to be plucked. We didn’t touch him.
And here is such a small brown saucer:
I wanted to pick it up with a knife to take a photo from below, but the mushroom is too small, and only one. Regretted. Let him grow up, maybe we will return to this place. For myself, I defined it as a thyroid disorder. Since the mushroom is considered quite edible and does not have a bad habit of accumulating toxins, I think we will try it too, if only the amount that can be seen in a pan without a microscope increases.
To be continued, another outing is planned for April. Stay tuned to learn more about mushrooms and more!