Shaggy ink cap: edible only while it stays white — photos

The shaggy ink cap is edible, but only while it is white: the cap wraps tightly around the stem and the gills underneath are white. As soon as the cap edge turns pink or black, the mushroom starts turning into black liquid, and then it no longer goes in the basket. It is easy to recognise: a tall white “wig” of a cap covered in shaggy scales, sticking straight up out of dug-over soil, a roadside or a lawn.

This is one of those mushrooms you see more often by a road or in a park than deep in the forest. And one of the few where the hurry is not to get to the forest, but to get from the forest to the kitchen.

What the shaggy ink cap looks like

A young shaggy ink cap looks like a white hood or a judge's wig pulled down over the stem. In fact, one of its English names is just that: lawyer's wig.

• The cap is elongated and egg-shaped, almost cylindrical, 5–15 cm tall. It is white, with a cream or brownish top, and covered all over in shaggy, upturned scales.
• The gills are very crowded, thin and free, meaning they do not reach the stem. In a young mushroom they are white, then they turn pink, and then black.
• The stem is white, tall and straight, hollow inside. It has a thin movable ring that easily slides down and darkens with spores over time.
• The flesh is white and tender, does not change colour when cut, and has a mild taste.

This autumn we found three young shaggy ink caps on freshly loosened soil next to a broadleaf forest. The caps still sit tightly on the stems, the scales are shaggy with brownish tips, and the cap edge is white. This is exactly what a mushroom worth picking looks like: tall, white, still “closed”.

Where and when it grows

The shaggy ink cap is not tied to trees. It feeds on plant remains in the soil, so it loves disturbed, loosened and fertilised ground: the verges of roads and dirt tracks, lawns, parks, meadows and pastures, vegetable gardens, heaps of soil after construction work, forest edges. It grows in groups, sometimes in long rows or even in a ring.

The best hint for finding it: freshly dug soil after rain. Our ink caps grew not under trees but on a strip of churned-up ground right in front of the forest, where fallen leaves were already lying.

The season is long: roughly from May to November, in several flushes after heavy rain. Ink caps are usually most plentiful in late summer and autumn. In Ukraine the species occurs throughout the country.

Why take only white ones: autolysis

The main peculiarity of ink caps is autolysis, that is, self-digestion. When the spores ripen, the gills begin to dissolve from the cap edge, the edge turns pink, then black, and the mushroom gradually melts into a black liquid full of spores. In the 17th–18th centuries this liquid really was used as ink, hence the folk name “ink mushroom”.

For the forager, this leads to a few simple rules.

• Take only mushrooms with white gills and a cap that sits tightly against the stem.
• A pink or black edge means the delicacy is already gone. The blackened parts are no longer eaten; according to descriptions they also quickly turn bitter, and such a mushroom will “leak” onto its neighbours in the basket.
• Cook them the same day, and better still within the first few hours after picking. Polish researchers advise cooking, processing or putting ink caps on ice within 4–6 hours, because even when stored for two days the mushroom falls apart. Autolysis does not stop in the basket or in the fridge, it only slows down.

It is handy to carry ink caps separately, in a small container or bag, so that they do not stain the rest of your mushrooms.

How to cook the shaggy ink cap

A young shaggy ink cap has tender flesh and a delicate taste. It is fried, stewed, added to omelettes, sauces and soups. As it cooks it releases a lot of juice, so at first the pan “boils” more than it fries, and that is normal.

There is no need to boil it separately and pour off the first water, as is done with conditionally edible mushrooms. But the general rule for wild mushrooms applies here too: at least 15 minutes of cooking, and it is never eaten raw.

And a word about where you pick. The shaggy ink cap grows exactly where the soil tends to be dirtiest, by roads and in towns. The Polish chemist Jerzy Falandysz, who studied ink caps from a small town and villages in Kashubia, showed that the mercury content of the caps and stems rises with soil pollution, that caps contain roughly twice as much as stems, and that mushrooms from urban sites can deliver a noticeable dose of it. High mercury levels in the shaggy ink cap have also been found in other European countries, highest of all near mining sites. So ink caps from a highway verge, a town flowerbed or a yard next to an industrial zone are best left where they grew. More on this in the article mushrooms near roads and towns: is it safe to pick them.

The shaggy ink cap and alcohol

Here it is important not to mix up two mushrooms.

The common ink cap contains coprine. Without alcohol this mushroom usually causes no symptoms at all. But in the body coprine is converted into a substance that blocks the enzyme that breaks down acetaldehyde, a toxic product of alcohol metabolism. It works much like the drugs used to treat alcoholism. If you drink after such a dish, within 5–10 minutes your face flushes, and palpitations, nausea, vomiting and tingling in the hands and feet set in. It usually passes within a few hours, but the sensitivity to alcohol lasts up to three days after you ate the mushrooms, and according to some data even longer.

With the shaggy ink cap the picture is different, though not entirely clear-cut. Toxicology reference books and a 2020 review of the shaggy ink cap by Polish scientists state that it contains no coprine. At the same time, German literature has data showing that coprine is present in it, but roughly five times less than in the common ink cap, and usually too little to cause a reaction. We found no cases of shaggy ink cap poisoning with alcohol described in the medical literature. In one report from an American poison centre, a man flushed after a “shaggy ink cap” and beer, but the specialists concluded that he had most likely eaten the common ink cap. So the main risk here is not the shaggy ink cap itself but a mistake over the species. The calmest course is simple: on a day when ink caps are on the table, skip the wine and beer.

How it differs from the common ink cap

Both mushrooms grow in similar places and both melt into ink, so they are easy to confuse in words. In real life the difference is easy to see.

• Colour. The shaggy ink cap is white. The common ink cap is grey or grey-brown.
• Cap. In the shaggy ink cap it is tall, almost cylindrical, covered all over in shaggy scales. In the common ink cap it is lower, egg- or bell-shaped, with radial grooves, almost smooth, with small scales only on the top.
• Ring. The shaggy ink cap has a movable ring on the stem. The common ink cap has no true ring, at most a faint trace near the base.
• How it grows. The common ink cap often sits in dense clusters, frequently where there is buried wood in the soil.

One more mushroom worth knowing by sight is the magpie inkcap (*Coprinopsis picacea*). When young it is also whitish, but later the cap turns dark with white patches, like a magpie's plumage. It is considered inedible: in some people it causes digestive upset.

So the rule is short: take only tall, pure white, shaggy ink caps with white gills. Leave a grey, smooth or blotchy mushroom alone.