Mushrooms popularly called several types of fungi that actually belong to different genera and even to different families. Makes them all what they got their name - habitat: they grow on stumps and trees - the living and the dead. Of edible mushrooms the most common mushroom found mushrooms, summer, meadow, autumn and winter. Of these four species to the genus Armillaria (Armillaria) applies only Armillaria autumn (Armillariella mellea) also known as the honey fungus present. Of the listed species can be confused only with Armillaria summer (Kuehneromyces mutabilis), as meadow and Enoki mushrooms differ markedly from the present appearance and places where they can be found.
However, if you confuse the summer with autumn tint, it will have unpleasant consequences, as the summer honey mushroom is an edible mushroom. However, taste and nutritional qualities, it is attributed only to the IV-th category, and autumn tint - III.
How to distinguish summer Armillaria from autumn?
1. Season
If autumn mushrooms only appear during cold weather in late August (usually two or three waves with intervals of 15-20 days), summer can be found in the beginning of summer in June. Fruit and summer, and autumn mushrooms until October.
2. Ecology
Armillaria summer grows on rotten wood and damaged trees. On the trunks of living trees is rare. He prefers hardwood trees, especially birch. Almost never occurs in coniferous trees.
Armillaria autumn, unlike other mushrooms - this parasite: he lives in the trunks of living trees (and destroy them). Possible home for autumn tint there are up to 200. He is able to grow even in a garden peonies or potatoes! However, dead wood Armillaria autumn too, not disdain. Autumn mushrooms growing on the stumps, can be the cause of the curious phenomena of luminescence stumps at night! Perhaps not themselves stumps, rotting wood, and the mycelium of mushrooms, surrounding a thin network of the entire stump.
3. Appearance
Thus, as you have noticed, neither time, nor the place of occurrence cannot be clear grounds on which to distinguish the summer mushrooms from autumn: both can meet in the fall in the same places.
So maybe they are easily distinguishable by their appearance? Not always, especially if we are talking about old mushrooms. It is indeed summer Armillaria called Kuehneromyces mutabilis - Kynurenines variable. In dry weather it loses many of its features, and then it can be confused with literally all the mushrooms that grow in similar conditions. So, for example, are advised to distinguish between summer and autumn mushrooms on the bonnet: the summer of Armillaria she dichroic and as if saturated with water, with darker wet stripe along the outer edge of the cap; the young mushrooms she yellowish-brown, old - rusty-brown. However, in dry weather hats summer experience will be dry.
In autumn mushrooms color is never aggressive. They are painted in soft, pastel colors: varies from light brown and beige to dark brown with a yellowish tinge.
Mushrooms summer (Kuehneromyces mutabilis)
Autumn mushrooms larger than the summer: the diameter of the cap autumn tint varies from 5 to 10 cm, but can reach the size of a saucer - 15 see Hats summer mushrooms have a diameter of from 2 to 8, see young autumn mushrooms surface hats and legs all covered with flaky scales.
Mushrooms autumn (Armillariella mellea)
Different summer and autumn mushrooms color dispute. In the autumn honey fungus spores are white, and therefore hats of old mushrooms covered with white "mold" is a spore-forming plaque. The summer honey fungus spores brown. Their is so much that the surface under the old summer mushrooms covered with a brown tinge. It also happens that the caps of the mushrooms "lower tier" are covered with a brown layer of spore powder from the top of the mushrooms, and it seems as if they are rotten. However, to determine the color of the dispute can only older mushrooms.
In conclusion, you need to make an important warning about the summer of Armillaria: because of its strong variability it can be similar to a number of poisonous mushrooms. And universal features, which could accurately distinguish summer Armillaria from these fungi, does not exist. One of the most dangerous doubles summer Armillaria - galerina bordered (Galerina marginata), such as poisonous as pale grebe. It only grows on coniferous trees. Therefore, in order to avoid accidents, do not pick mushrooms in the coniferous forests and on the stumps of pine trees and never forget the rule of "Not sure, do not take it!"
Galerina bordered (Galerina marginata)
And in dry weather summer Armillaria can easily be confused with false mushrooms sulphur-yellow (Hypholoma fasciculare), brick red (Hypholoma osublateium) and seropositivity (Hypholoma capnoides). However, unlike edible agarics are not pleasant mushroom smell, but to distinguish mushrooms on this basis can only be experienced mushroom. To reduce errors, do not collect old summer mushrooms, which already does not look like himself!
See also:
How to distinguish agarics from this?
