Honey fungus, the star of golden autumn

When the summer warmth fades and the cool, damp days begin, honey fungus season arrives in the forest. This mushroom grows in huge, close-knit clusters on stumps and roots, so one lucky find often fills a whole basket. No wonder honey fungus is considered the star mushroom of golden autumn.

Let's get to know honey fungus better: what it looks like, where and when to look for it, why it appears in sudden flushes, and how to stay safe from its poisonous lookalikes.

What honey fungus looks like

Honey fungus has a few consistent features that make it easy to recognize.

• Cap. Honey-brown, from pale ochre to brown, covered with small dark scales, especially in the center.
• Ring on the stem. Near the top of the stem there's a membranous white ring, like a little skirt. This is the most important feature.
• Gills. Pale, cream-colored, turning slightly brownish with age.
• Stem. Long, slender, firm, often thickened at the base.

Honey fungus grows in tight clusters, often with dozens of fused stems. The combination of scales on the cap, pale gills and a ring on the stem immediately marks true honey fungus.

Where and when honey fungus grows

Honey fungus is a wood-decaying mushroom, so you should look for it not in the leaf litter but on wood.

It grows on stumps, fallen trunks and around the roots of living and dead trees, most often broadleaf ones. A single tree can produce honey fungus several years in a row, so good spots are worth remembering.

The main flush comes in September and October, when daytime warmth combines with cool, damp nights. Exactly this kind of weather, described in our article on Indian summer and mushrooms, triggers the mass fruiting of honey fungus. To catch the moment, use the mushroom radar.

Why honey fungus grows in flushes

Honey fungus shows especially vividly what a mushroom flush is.

The mycelium across the whole area responds to the same conditions, so after a good cold snap with rain, honey fungus pops up almost simultaneously and en masse. A few days pass, the flush ages, and the forest goes quiet again until the next trigger.

That's why experienced foragers don't go after honey fungus at random but catch the flush itself. We write more about this phenomenon in our article on why mushrooms grow in flushes.

How not to confuse it with lookalikes

Poisonous false honey fungus grows on stumps right next to the true one, so vigilance is a must.

The most reliable check is the ring on the stem: true honey fungus has one, the sulphur tuft doesn't. True honey fungus also has pale gills and scales on the cap, while the lookalike has bright yellow gills and a smooth cap.

Examine every mushroom individually, because the lookalikes grow mixed in with the real ones. We've laid out all the differences in detail in our article on false honey fungus. And in summer, its relative the sheathed woodtuft grows on stumps, also a tasty mushroom.

Sources

• “Key to the Fungi of Ukraine” (Kyiv, Naukova Dumka publishing house).
• Armillaria mellea in GBIF, the global biodiversity database.
• Armillaria mellea in MycoBank, the international fungal nomenclature database.
• Armillaria mellea on Wikipedia.