Pored or gilled mushrooms: how and why to tell them apart

The first thing an experienced forager does on picking up an unfamiliar mushroom is turn it over and look under the cap. What's there, tubes or gills, immediately narrows things down and hints at which group the mushroom belongs to. This simple habit not only speeds up identification but also helps keep a dangerous species out of your basket.

Let's look at how pored mushrooms differ from gilled ones, how to see it, and why the morphology of the cap's underside matters so much.

What is a hymenophore

The underside of a mushroom cap, the part where the spores mature, is called the hymenophore. Its structure divides most mushrooms into two large groups.

• Tubular hymenophore. Under the cap are countless tightly packed tubes that together look like a sponge. Press it and the surface springs back.
• Gilled hymenophore. Underneath are thin gills that radiate from the stem to the edge of the cap, like spokes.

It's easy to check: turn the mushroom over and see whether it's a sponge or gills. You can tell them apart even by touch.

Pored mushrooms

Pored mushrooms, also called boletes, make up most of the most sought-after forest mushrooms.

They include porcini, slippery jacks, birch boletes, aspen boletes, Xerocomus boletes. Their sponge separates easily from the cap, and the group itself is considered one of the safest for beginners: there are no deadly poisonous species among pored mushrooms, only a few bitter or mildly poisonous ones, such as the bitter bolete and Devil's bolete.

That's why beginners are often advised to start with pored mushrooms. In an old pored mushroom the sponge becomes loose and dark, a sign that the mushroom is past its prime.

Gilled mushrooms

Gilled mushrooms are more numerous and diverse, but this is exactly where the main danger hides.

They include wonderful brittlegills, field mushrooms, honey fungus and knights, and all the deadly poisonous mushrooms, including the death cap and amanitas. That's why gilled mushrooms call for more attention: here the additional features decide it, such as gill color, a ring on the stem, a sac at the base.

A special case is the chanterelle: underneath it has not true gills but thick, forked ridges that run down the stem. It's an in-between variant worth learning to recognize too.

Why it matters

Being able to tell the group in a second gives you several advantages at once.

1. Narrows the search. Once you know the group, it's easier to identify the species by other features.
2. Improves safety. There are no deadly species among pored mushrooms, so they're a safer place for a beginner to start.
3. Shows ripeness. A loose, dark sponge on a pored mushroom is a sign that it's past its prime.
4. Helps you learn. Morphology is the language that mushroom identification guides “speak.”

Of course, hymenophore structure alone doesn't determine edibility: there are excellent gilled mushrooms, and there are bitter pored ones. So after checking under the cap, always cross-check the remaining features using our safe foraging rules.

Sources

• “Identification Guide to the Fungi of Ukraine” (Kyiv, Naukova Dumka publishing house).
• Boletus edulis in GBIF, the global biodiversity database.
• Hymenium in MycoBank, the international fungal nomenclature database.
• Hymenium on Wikipedia.