Honey mushrooms or shaggy scalycap: how to tell them apart

The quickest way to tell shaggy scalycap from honey mushrooms is the cap. On the scalycap it's dry and covered in coarse, curled scales, almost like feathers. Sheathed woodtuft has a smooth, moist cap that turns two-toned as it dries. Honey fungus does have scales, but they're small, dark and bunched towards the center, and rain washes them off easily. The smell is your second clue: shaggy scalycap often smells of radish or garlic, while both honey mushrooms smell faintly. Honey fungus also gives itself away with a white spore print, where the scalycap's is rusty brown.

We found and photographed all three ourselves. The woodtufts were on a fallen birch, the honey fungus was pushing out from under the bark of another birch, and the scalycaps were in a tight cluster in the leaf litter by a tree. Below we put them side by side and go through the features one by one.

Why people confuse them

Shaggy scalycap (Pholiota squarrosa) is sometimes called a honey mushroom too, and the resemblance is real. Like sheathed woodtuft (Kuehneromyces mutabilis) and honey fungus (Armillaria mellea), it grows in dense clusters on wood or at the base of trees, has a ring on the stem and turns up in autumn. What it shares with honey fungus is that both can live on living trees. What it shares with the woodtuft is a brown spore print and a scaly stem below the ring.

Here's our scalycap, a cluster that came up by a young maple in a broadleaf wood.

And here are sheathed woodtufts on a mossy birch log.

And this is honey fungus, coming out from under the bark of a fallen birch.

You can see the difference even from a distance: the scalycap looks feathered, while the honey mushrooms have smooth caps or just a light sprinkling of fine scales.

The cap: coarse scales, fine scales or smooth

This is the key feature. Shaggy scalycap has a dry cap that's never slimy, straw-yellow to ochre. It's densely covered in brown, triangular scales that don't lie flat but stick out and curl upwards. They sit in rough rings and rain doesn't wash them off.

Sheathed woodtuft has a smooth cap without a single scale, 3–8 cm across, with a broad bump in the center. In wet weather it's an even reddish-brown.

As it dries, the cap doesn't pale all at once but in bands and patches, so it looks two-toned. Mycologists call a cap like this hygrophanous. On ours you can see darker, water-soaked patches left on the honey-beige caps.

Honey fungus has a honey-yellow to brownish cap. Its scales are small, dark and hairy, and thicker in the center. They often disappear with age and rain washes them away, so after rain a mature honey fungus can look almost smooth too. But it never has the coarse, curled scales of the scalycap.

Watch out for golden scalycap as well. It's scaly too, but in wet weather its cap is slimy and sticky, and the scales can wash off. A dry cap is what gives shaggy scalycap away.

Stem and ring

Above the ring, shaggy scalycap has a smooth, pale stem. Below the ring it's just as scaly as the cap, with rusty, upturned scales on a yellowish background. The ring is fluffy, almost felt-like, and often breaks up into shreds.

We split one stem lengthwise. The flesh is firm and pale yellowish.

Sheathed woodtuft has a thinner stem, 5–10 mm, and it's often curved. Above the ring it's pale and smooth. Below the ring it's fibrous, covered in small dark-brown scales, and darkens almost to black at the base. The ring is ragged and doesn't last. So both have scales on the stem, but the scalycap's are large, rusty and match the cap, while the woodtuft's are small and dark, under a smooth cap.

Honey fungus has a long, fibrous stem without coarse scales. Its ring is white and membranous with a yellowish edge, and it lasts. The similar dark honey fungus has dark scales on the underside of its ring. At the base of honey fungus clusters and under the bark you'll often find black strands that look like bootlaces. These are rhizomorphs, which honey fungus uses to spread from tree to tree. Neither the scalycap nor the woodtuft has them.

Gills and spore print

Shaggy scalycap and sheathed woodtuft both start with pale, yellowish or ochre gills that turn brown with age. Both have a brown spore print: rusty brown in the scalycap, cinnamon brown in the woodtuft. So you can't tell these two apart by their spores.

Honey fungus is a different story. Its gills are whitish or cream, turning yellowish with age and sometimes picking up rusty spots, but they never darken much. Its spore print is white or very pale cream.

You can see the spore print right there in the woods. When mushrooms grow in a cluster, the upper caps dust the lower ones with spores. A white coating on the lower caps points to honey fungus, a brown one to the scalycap or the woodtuft. At home, lay a cap gills-down on a sheet of paper for a few hours and look at the color of the print it leaves.

Smell and where they grow

Shaggy scalycap often smells of radish, garlic or onion and tastes slightly bitter. Both honey mushrooms smell faintly, of nothing in particular.

Sheathed woodtuft lives on dead wood: stumps, logs and fallen trunks of broadleaf trees, most often birch, like ours. It has a long season, from April to October.

Honey fungus is an aggressive parasite. It attacks living, healthy trees, broadleaf, fruit and conifer alike, and then carries on living on their stumps. It grows in huge clumps on stumps, trunks and roots, mostly in September and October, sometimes into November. Dark honey fungus is more often found on conifers, especially spruce.

Sometimes honey fungus pokes straight up through the leaves, as if it were growing from the soil. In fact there are roots or buried wood underneath.

Shaggy scalycap grows at the base of trees and on roots and stumps, mostly broadleaf ones (beech, maple, birch, ash), and occasionally on spruce. It can also settle on a living tree, but as a weak parasite, picking trees that are already struggling. Its season runs from August to November, so it overlaps with both honey mushrooms.

Can you eat shaggy scalycap?

The field guides disagree. Ukrainian references call it edible but poor: boiled first, then pickled or salted. British mycologists say it's definitely not edible. American researchers of the genus Pholiota noted that it develops an unpleasant taste.

There's also a recorded case of poisoning. In 1965 the American mycologist Robert Shaffer described people who ate shaggy scalycap with alcohol and had vomiting and diarrhea about 10 hours later. Toxicologists later pointed out that this came far too late for the well-known reaction between common ink cap and alcohol, so the mechanism is probably different. The evidence is thin, essentially one old case. But it doesn't make the mushroom any tastier.

Our advice is simple: leave shaggy scalycap in the woods.

Honey fungus is edible only with proper cooking. Raw or undercooked, it upsets the stomach. It's boiled for about 20 minutes, the water is poured off, and only then is it fried or stewed. We explain how in a separate article: how to clean and cook honey mushrooms.

The real danger isn't the scalycap, it's the funeral bell

If you pick sheathed woodtuft, keep the funeral bell (Galerina marginata) in mind. It's deadly poisonous, with the same amatoxins as the death cap. The funeral bell grows on the same stumps and logs at the same time of year, and has the same honey-brown hygrophanous cap, a ring and a brown spore print.

Here's how to tell it apart. Below the ring, its stem is covered in fine silvery fibers, not scales. It smells of flour. It grows more often on conifer wood, though it turns up on broadleaf wood too. British mycologists note that the funeral bell's cap dries from the edge towards the center, the opposite of the woodtuft, which dries from the center. But sometimes only a microscope can separate the two. That's why sheathed woodtuft is only recommended for people who know it well, and why you should check every mushroom on its own rather than cutting a whole cluster at once. We cover this in more detail in summer vs. autumn honey mushrooms and in our guide to false honey mushrooms.

In short: how to tell them apart

• Cap. Scalycap: dry, with coarse, curled scales. Woodtuft: smooth and moist, drying two-toned. Honey fungus: small dark scales in the center, almost smooth after rain.
• Stem. Scalycap: large rusty scales below the ring, like those on the cap. Woodtuft: thin, with small dark scales below the ring, almost black at the base. Honey fungus: long and fibrous, no coarse scales, black bootlace rhizomorphs at the base.
• Ring. Scalycap: fluffy, felt-like. Woodtuft: ragged, short-lived. Honey fungus: white, membranous, long-lasting.
• Spore print. Scalycap and woodtuft: brown. Honey fungus: white.
• Smell. Scalycap: radish or garlic. Both honey mushrooms: faint.
• Where they grow. Scalycap: at the base of trees, on roots and stumps. Woodtuft: on dead wood, most often birch. Honey fungus: in big clumps on stumps, trunks and roots, and on living trees.