An hour and a half drive along a fairly decent road, another half hour along a country road, and now we are already near the birch groves. Pegs began to be found even earlier, but, according to friends who were here before us, there are not many mushrooms in them and it is not worth spending time checking for availability.

Now about the mushrooms themselves. I'll start, perhaps, with edible tubular ones.
First on this list, of course.

Boletus.

We begin the article on birch forest mushrooms, naturally, with the boletus mushroom.

Boletus genus Abaceae, Boletaceae family. There are more than 40 species.
Fleshy caps, from light yellow to Brown, on a thin, light-colored stalk with black rough scales, with a porous tubular hemenophore network ranging from beige to greenish. (The false boletus, which is not eaten, has a pinkish net, as well as a pinkish cap). Naturally, we met most often. But since the last rains passed three days ago, the mushrooms most often came across were either old or wormy, which are not recommended to be eaten. This rule applies to absolutely all types of mushrooms.


Firstly, old mushroom loses its taste, secondly, it instantly becomes infected with mold and infects other mushrooms.


Worms found in mushrooms not only release harmful toxins, but are also able to crawl onto completely healthy mushrooms, infecting them with their waste products.
Healthy birch mushrooms have a high nutritional value, contain absorbents that can support the functioning of sick kidneys.
Second

Porcini.

Although White mushroom and is considered the most delicious, healthy and tasty, but we encountered porcini mushrooms from the birch forest less often and for this reason, it came in second place in the list of mushrooms from the birch forests that we visited.
Why is the porcini mushroom called white? Main feature This fungus is that it does not darken like its other related species and always remains white during processing. This feature also helps distinguish white from false white, which turns pink when cut. Another distinctive feature is that the white's hymenophore layer is white or slightly yellowish, while its counterpart is pinkish.
Porcini mushrooms are dried and boiled into soup, salted, pickled, fried and eaten in almost any form.
Third

Boletus

The aspen boletus, or as my friend the redhead calls it, was even less common than the white one, this is not surprising; although aspen grew in the birch stakes, it was in extremely small quantities, and this mushroom was found among it. Young boletuses grow on long legs and have a red, unopened cap. And those that are older have a hat that is not so red, closer to brownish, but has already opened into a hemispherical shape. The cut of the mushroom or the crushed spongy hymenophore part of the cap turns slightly blue. When cooked, the flesh turns black.
Boletus is good fried with potatoes.
A very satisfying mushroom. It would seem that a small frying pan with ready-made mushrooms fried in sunflower oil with onions and potatoes can satisfy a small group of people.
Fourth

Moss fly green.

Even less common was the green moss fly, which differed from the other tubular ones by having a brown cap with a slight green tint and a greenish spongy hemenophore. Cooking moss mushrooms is no different from birch mushrooms and other mushrooms. Therefore, it is prepared together with everyone else, with the exception of the white mushroom, which is prepared separately from the rest.

Lamellar

Real breast milk (wet).

To be honest, I met a real milk mushroom for the first time in my life and would not have taken it into my trophies for anything, since I was used to considering it a milk mushroom. If it weren’t for my friend, a mushroom picker, who visited these places since childhood, with his father, and knew almost everything edible mushrooms birch forest, I would have missed it.

Why did this mushroom puzzle me?

• Firstly, its beauty. Almost perfect, round, white hat with a depression in the center. Clean, as if someone had cared for it, without hiding, it stands in a clearing, in a small group covered with fallen leaves and blades of grass.
• Secondly, the velvety fluff that covers his hat.
  Only the smell of a cut mushroom could confirm that it was a real milk mushroom, or as it is also called wet.

Almost all of the wet ones that were cut had a hollow stem in the middle. Unfortunately, we also came across wormy mushrooms; it was possible to determine whether a wormy mushroom was or not by cutting it in half or completely cutting off the stem.
Second

Aspen milk mushroom

As I wrote above, among the birches there were also aspen trees, and in them, in addition to boletuses, there was also the aspen mushroom that is familiar to me.
It differs from the real one in the shape of the cap at a more mature age; if a young milk mushroom has an almost regular round shape of a cap with curved edges and a hole in the center, then an adult one loses the correctness of its shape and takes on the shape of a wine glass with uneven edges. It can grow singly or in a family of several mushrooms from young to old.

Milk mushrooms are eaten only after repeated soaking, sometimes boiled to get rid of the bitterness that it possesses. Even soaked mushrooms are not recommended to be consumed immediately. Mushrooms that have been salted for at least forty days are eaten.

Milk mushrooms are rarely fried or boiled, they have a dense structure, but in their form they are very tasty and, when properly salted, are eaten with pleasure with boiled potatoes.
Third

Champignon

Champignons are probably the most aromatic mushrooms of the birch forest and beyond that I have encountered and eaten. Champignon is found everywhere, I found it in the steppe, in meadows, in coniferous and deciduous forests, so the birch forests were no exception, although most of those collected grew next to the pegs.

Champignon is very delicious mushroom, but for some reason, where I live, it is rarely salted and pickled. It is mainly eaten fried with potatoes. It is also dried and made into soup.

• You can preserve champignon for a long time if you soak it in water for several hours. cold water, cut off the part of the leg that was in the ground. Next, rinse with added citric acid and boil in salted water, place hot along with the broth in jars and close with plastic lids. Soups and sauces are prepared from this decoction.

Recently, they have begun to sell those grown in greenhouses, but they cannot be compared with wild ones. The champignon has a white, slightly rough, convex cap at the top. In mature mushrooms, it can be almost flat. The hemenophore part of the fungus is lamellar, from pinkish in young ones to dark brown in mature ones. Grows singly and rarely in families in the soil.

Has a strong external resemblance to the pale grebe. Distinctive feature is the white color of the spore plates and the not very pleasant smell of toadstool.

Champignon also has its absolute counterpart among non- edible mushrooms This is a yellow-skinned champignon. Distinctive feature this mushroom is bad smell and yellowing of pressure points on the mushroom.

Once you smell the champignon, you won’t confuse it with anything else.
Fourth

Russula

I don’t know for what reason, but we don’t eat this mushroom either. A possible reason for this is its fragile structure. By the time you get it home, there will be nothing left of it, it will all fall apart.
Bright red wavy caps, sometimes with whitish streaks, on a cylindrical white stem, are clearly visible against the background of vegetation.

Raincoat

Although the puffball is considered an edible mushroom, in our area, none of my friends, and even I, have ever eaten them, so I can’t say anything about their taste.

The puffball is similar in appearance to a young champignon, but does not have spore plates, and when cut, it resembles a dense white ball. The maturation of spores occurs in the nutria of the mushroom, therefore, in adulthood, when light pressure is applied to the mushroom, it bursts and releases a column of greenish spores into the air.

I have never cooked a raincoat, but on the Internet they write that they fry it and make soup. Before cooking, remove the skin. Young, dense mushrooms are eaten.

Well, it seems like all the edible mushrooms of the birch forest that I came across in the pegs.

• Although some birch forest mushrooms are tasty and you want to eat as much as possible, I do not recommend doing this, since they require good digestion and can cause stomach upset.
• In mature mushrooms, be sure to remove the hemenophore layer; fungal spores are almost not digested.
• It’s a good idea to put peeled mushrooms in salted water for 30 minutes; this will help get rid of sand and small debris, as well as worms that you missed when cleaning the mushrooms.
• You should not taste the mushrooms.
• There are more mushrooms in sunny meadows than in the wilderness
• Do not collect old flabby and wormy mushrooms.
• Do not take honey mushrooms with a brightly colored cap, they may be false.
• Mushrooms that have a thickening in the lower part of the stem, like a fly agaric, cannot be taken.
• Be sure to wash and boil the lines and morels.
• Milky mushrooms, mushrooms that secrete milky white juice on the cut or spore plates, must be soaked or boiled for several days.
• If you cook a mushroom, it will sit on the bottom, and the raw one will float.
• When cleaning the boletus, the skin of the cap is separated.
• Porcini mushroom does not change its taste and aroma with any cooking method.
• Only a decoction of white and champignons is used as a seasoning.
• Russulas can be boiled, fried and salted.
• Honey mushrooms are salted, pickled and fried.
• Inedible for worms, chanterelles are quite suitable for food, either salted, pickled or fried.
• Champignons have such a pleasant taste and smell that adding spices only worsens the taste of the dish.
• Sunflower oil is best suited for cooking, storing and seasoning mushrooms. They fry it on it, add it with onions to salted milk mushrooms when serving, pour it on top of mushrooms placed in jars to prevent mold from appearing.

Inedible mushrooms

Pig

I found out the name by comparing my photos with photos from the Internet.

This is a new mushroom for me, and I treat new things with caution. For this reason, we did not collect pigs. And what pigs if there are more interesting mushrooms. The pig's appearance is similar to a milk mushroom, and its color is like that of a birch mushroom. Therefore, seeing it from afar, it is easy to confuse it with a birch tree, and only when you come closer and cut it off, you realize that you have been deceived, the pig has a lamellar hemenophore part.
Pig mushroom is considered an inedible mushroom. Although in some regions of Russia it is consumed as food, after special processing.

Fly agaric.

These are the most famous and recognizable inedible mushrooms birch forest. A red cap with white speckles on a thin, white stalk growing from a bulbous stalk, sometimes with a collar under the opened cap. In Kolka we came across two species with a red and a gray cap.

I also encountered another type of mushroom, but I could not determine its identity.

The rest were either not at all attractive, or clearly expressed their unsuitability for consumption.

In the pegs there was also a steppe onion,

Having taken the young leaves from him, they seasoned the tomato salad with them.

There were also many strawberry shoots growing,

but there were no berries, the season was over.

Sometimes you came across bushes with rare stone fruit berries.

Just before leaving, I decided to look into a small patch of young birch trees to see if there were any birch forest mushrooms there, and aaand, I finally climbed into a hornet’s nest. God gave me good legs and the ability to run fast. I received twenty light bites in the back and the very first one in the eyebrow.
I drove sixty kilometers to the first settlement with periodically recurring stabbing pains at the bite sites, well not while driving.

We arrived at an inhabited village and quickly went to a stall for an antidote in the form of a 300 gram scale of vodka. I drank it and felt better. The next day, only small red dots remained from the bites and no complications. Vodka is the best medicine for evil insect bites.

Beware of old dry birch trees with voids inside. Wasps love them very much and build nests there. Such trunks are most often found next to young birch trees.

Like other biotopes, pine forests have their own specificity of mushrooms, which grow exclusively in coniferous forests. The number of unusual plants and animals is very low, however, this is an ideal landscape for the growth of mushrooms. Currently, most coniferous forests are of a mixed type with deciduous trees, and this increases the diversity of fungi growing in coniferous forests.

On almost any walk through a coniferous forest you can find mushrooms. All fungi have an underground network of tiny filaments of fungal epithelium. Many of the coniferous forest mushrooms grow around the roots of trees. Trees and mushrooms are directly proportional to each other, since mushrooms consume organic substances from the tree, and themselves supply the trees with water, minerals and nutrients substances. If a tree dies or is cut down, the fungal threads around its roots die. If a new tree is subsequently planted in this place, it will not grow because the soil lacks this important fungus.

Fungi are highly dependent for their existence on nutrients obtained from organic materials such as rotting leaves and animals. Unlike green plants, mushrooms cannot produce their own energy from sunlight And inorganic substances. This happens because mushrooms do not have Chemical substance called chlorophyll, which allows plants to carry out the process of photosynthesis. Thread fungi grow around rotting leaves and decaying animals, consuming substances necessary for development. Then these filaments secrete enzymes that allow them to digest food molecules.

The growth of mushrooms in coniferous forests is very popular due to the presence large quantity food organics. The needles fall from the branches, animals, birds and insects die, but the mushrooms don’t care, just more food. Mushrooms are part of this the food chain, along with bacteria and soil insects.

Instead of growing in threads through the soil, these types of fungi take up positions under the tree bark, taking all the nutrients from the host. The spores of these fungi spread to other trees where there is damage in the trunk.

The mushroom world of the coniferous forest is very diverse. One of the most, perhaps, poisonous mushrooms coniferous forest is considered to be a fly agaric. Bright hats are very attractive, but at the same time very dangerous. Fly agaric poisoning leads to sad consequences, often fatal.

Among the edible mushrooms of the coniferous forest one can distinguish russula, boletus, saffron milk caps, chanterelles, etc.

Based on the type of forest, you can to some extent determine what mushrooms can grow in them. Which ones you can definitely find here and which ones are growing more. But at the same time, the forest may be birch, but due to the presence of admixtures of other trees, such as aspen or pine, the species composition of mushrooms may change accordingly.

Mushrooms in pine forests.

For pine forests characterized by the presence of porcini mushroom, bittersweet, truffle, variegated umbrella mushroom, spiny puffball, govorushka, gall mushroom, greenfinch, ringed cap, goat, boletus (late, granular, swamp), yellow-brown and green moss mushrooms, fly agaric, fly agarics, mushrooms , pepper mushroom, horned mushroom, pine saffron mushroom, Polish mushroom, row mushroom, thick mushroom, morel, stitch, russula, garlic, false chanterelle, autumn honey fungus.

Mushrooms in birch forests.

In birch forests, white mushrooms, boletus mushrooms, valui mushrooms, pink boletus mushrooms, white mushrooms, govorushka mushrooms, variegated umbrella mushrooms, real and black milk mushrooms, spiny puffball mushrooms, yellow blackberries, bighead mushrooms, and false puffball mushrooms usually grow. real chanterelle, green fly agaric, fly agaric, aspen boletus, podgruzdok, yellow horned mushroom, thin pigtail, sirushka, violin, morel, russula, oyster mushroom, pear-shaped puffball, summer and autumn honey mushrooms.

Mushrooms in spruce forests.

Commonly found in spruce forests are porcini mushrooms, variegated umbrella mushrooms, yellow milk mushrooms, puffballs, yellow blackberries, gall mushrooms, caps, granular butterflies, green moss mushrooms, spruce fly mushrooms, fly agarics, podgrudok, spruce mushrooms, pig mushrooms, morels, stitches, russulas , garlic, wild champignon.

Mushrooms in aspen forests.

IN aspen forests Commonly growing boletus, valui, govorushka, variegated umbrella mushroom, aspen milk mushroom, puffballs, yellow blackberry, real chanterelle, common puffball, green fly agaric, fly agaric, podgrudki, svinushka, violin, conical morel, sulfur-yellow tinder fungus, garlic, forest champignon , morel cap, oyster mushroom, winter mushroom, summer and autumn honey fungus, false honey fungus.

Mushrooms in alder forests.

In the alder forests there are pink mothweed, prickly puffball, green mosswort, white podgrudok, thin pigweed, and russula.

Mushrooms in linden groves.

In linden groves there are usually porcini mushrooms, black milk mushrooms, oak mushrooms, and morel caps.

Mushrooms in the cedar forest.

In the cedar forest there are saffron milk caps, variegated chanterelles, and spiderworts.

What mushrooms are found in poplar groves (sedge groves).

In poplar groves you can find gray boletus, aspen milk mushrooms (sokorev milk mushrooms) and blue milk mushrooms.

What kind of mushrooms are there in the hornbeam forest?

In the hornbeam forest there are porcini mushrooms (dark bronze shape, reticulate shape), and hornbeams (a type of black boletus).

Mushrooms in a beech forest.

In the beech forest you can find porcini mushrooms, common oak mushrooms, and black truffles.

In oak-deciduous forests.

White mushroom, chestnut mushroom grow, death cap, talker, oak and pepper milk mushrooms, puffball, oakberry, yellow blackberry, bighead, cherry, real chanterelle, false honey fungus, green mushroom, violin, morel cap, oyster mushroom, summer and autumn honey fungus.

In larch forests.

Larch butterwort and green mosswort are growing.

In a mixed forest.

Milk mushrooms (real, blue, black), porcini mushrooms, chestnut mushrooms, aspen mushrooms (yellow-brown and red-brown), valui, volushki (pink and white), variegated fly mushrooms, boletus mushrooms, russula (yellow, greenish, green, kid) are growing , blue-yellow), smoothies, oyster mushrooms (common and autumn), gray talkers, honey mushrooms (summer, autumn and winter), gray floats, rows (gray and violet), gray mushrooms, sulfur-yellow tinder fungi, golden scales.

In a deciduous forest.

Common oak mushrooms, chestnut mushrooms, valui, Polish mushrooms, russula (brown, kid, edible, whole), pepper milk mushrooms, oyster mushrooms (oak, common and autumn), talkers (anise and funnel mushroom), red fly mushrooms, honey mushrooms (summer, autumn and winter), honey mushrooms, deer pluteas, yellow cattails , golden scales, boletus.

Where to look for mushrooms in the forest.

But even within the forest, where the species match each other, the number of mushrooms is not always the same: the age of the trees affects it. It is known that boletus appears already around five years old on pine trees. When the crowns of the trees close (this is already by 10-12 years), an environment is created under the canopy suitable for the appearance of trumpet mushrooms, milk mushrooms, chanterelles, gray milk mushrooms, saffron milk caps, russula and, finally, white mushrooms. But their abundance is still far away.

The most productive forests are considered to be between 15 and 40 years old. Their root system has strengthened and gained strength, but still has many small shoots with a delicate bark, very pliable for the penetration of mycelium. In addition, in such a forest the moisture consumption is not very high, as in a mature one. The litter layer is still relatively thin, which means it does not prevent the soil from warming up quickly.

Mature forests (over 40 years old) are unusually moisture-loving. Like a pump, they pump water out of the ground, quickly drying it up. The crown there is dense and the litter is thicker. It takes a long time for the heat in such forests to reach the ground. The coarsened tree roots are no longer too tough for the mycelium threads. The older the forest, the fewer mushrooms it contains. Finding out what mushrooms can be in a particular forest is half the battle. At first glance it seems that they grow anywhere. In reality, the representatives of the forest kingdom have a completely different attitude.

The location, the soil, the type of tree - everything is the same, and yet in some “vegetable gardens” mushrooms appear from year to year, while in others, which seem to be similar in many ways, they do not appear. Mushrooms, oddly enough, are finicky. They choose soil rich in forest humus, which is also well heated. Many of them love forest edges, clearings, edges of forest paths and abandoned roads.

Mushrooms prefer young spruce and pine forests, oak groves, birch forests, mixed forests. Small hills, slopes of ravines, semi-shaded or sunny places are also convenient for them. At the same time, mushrooms avoid thickets, forests with dense cover, tall grass, dense lingonberries, blueberries, swampy lowlands, and too dry forest bald spots.

In the heat, mushrooms hide from the sun at the roots, under the branches of deciduous trees, and spruce branches. In stormy summer, autumn or in a damp forest, it’s the other way around: they appear on the edges and bare, elevated clearings. Not only the location determines the growth of mushrooms, each species has its own favorite possessions, where they are found almost every year in large or small quantities. No less the appearance various types depends on the weather (it should be moderately humid) and air temperature.