Contents
Many lovers of “silent hunting” agree that oyster mushrooms growing in the forest are more fragrant and tasty than their “brothers” grown at home. In the forest, oyster mushrooms grow on fallen, dying or diseased tree trunks, rotten or rotten stumps. However, going to the forest for a “gribalka”, you need to know not only where these fruiting bodies grow, but also how to distinguish edible oyster mushrooms from false ones. Otherwise, due to inexperience, you can pick up inedible mushrooms and harm your health.
Description of edible oyster mushrooms
Before you understand how to distinguish false forest oyster mushrooms from their edible “colleagues”, you should remember one important detail. The fact is that there are no poisonous representatives of this species on our territory, unless, of course, you collect them in Chernobyl or near Fukushima. The poisonous twin of oyster mushroom grows only in Australia.
And although false oyster mushrooms grow on the territory of Our Country, Ukraine and Belarus, they are not poisonous. They are classified as conditionally edible or inedible mushrooms. But they are almost impossible to confuse with species that are freely eaten.
To date, the most common representative of edible oyster mushrooms is oyster mushroom or oyster mushroom. We suggest that you familiarize yourself with its description in more detail, because knowing the characteristics of this fungus, you can easily distinguish it from false species.
[ »»]
Latin name: Pleurotus ostreatus.
Family: Oyster mushrooms.
Doubles: No. The similarity with the Australian poisonous mushroom Omphalotus nidiformis (Berk.) is mentioned.
Hat: Fleshy, rounded, resembling an oyster in appearance. The upper part is smooth and glossy, rarely wavy. It has a gray color, brown, purple, white and yellow shades are allowed. The cap size ranges from 3 to 25 cm in diameter.
Leg: Short, inconspicuous, widened from the side of the cap. Smooth, cream or white, becoming hairy and hard towards the base.
Pulp: Light, dense, juicy and soft. In adulthood, the pulp becomes much harder, the appearance of tight fibers is observed.
Application: They are very popular in cooking. Perfectly lend themselves to pickling, frying, stewing, canning, drying, freezing, salting and pickling. In medicine, oyster mushrooms are used to make medicines used in the treatment of cancerous tumors, as well as during radiation and chemotherapy.
Edibility: Edible mushroom, belongs to category IV.
Spread: Deciduous, rarely coniferous forests. It grows in all territories of the former Soviet Union countries.
In addition, other forest edible oyster mushrooms are less common: horn-shaped, steppe, lung and royal.
[ »wp-content/plugins/include-me/ya1-h2.php»]
Are there false oyster mushrooms and photos of how they look
And what can be said about false oyster mushrooms – what do they look like? It should be noted that there are few false oyster mushrooms growing in our territory. It’s easy to identify them: they have much brighter shades than edible representatives.
As you can see, among the forest false oyster mushrooms, two of the most common species found in Our Country can be distinguished: orange oyster mushroom and wolf sawfly. These fruiting bodies are not poisonous, but they cannot be eaten due to their excessive bitterness. So, orange oyster mushroom fully justifies its name, because it has a bright and juicy color. The leg of this mushroom is almost completely absent, and clings to the bark of the tree with the cap itself. In addition to being orange in color, this type of fruiting body also has a strange smell. At a young age, they smell like melon, and mature individuals smell like rotten cabbage.
Oyster mushroom orange has a dense fluffy skin and bitter flesh. It grows mainly in deciduous forests in a beautiful fan-shaped family. Today, spores of this type of fungus are sold in specialized flower shops. Many people use them to decorate the landscapes of their yards by planting trees on stumps and trunks. The photo below will help you figure out whether there are false oyster mushrooms:
Wolf or felt sawfly also belongs to the category of inedible mushrooms. It lives on dead wood of deciduous and coniferous trees from June to November. The cap is 3 to 8 cm in diameter. The hat is dull, tongue-shaped, grown sideways, cream or brown. At a later age, it acquires “rusty” spots. The leg is brownish, almost imperceptible, more often completely absent. The pulp is dense, white, when broken it has a sharp mushroom smell and a bitter taste. Photos of false forest oyster mushrooms can be seen below.