Yellow fungi on pine stumps: plums and custard or sulphur tuft?

Yellow mushrooms by a pine stump most often turn out to be either plums and custard or sulphur tuft. You tell them apart by the gills: in plums and custard they are bright yellow, like egg yolk, and the cap is covered in purple “velvet”. Sulphur tuft has a smooth, sulphur-yellow cap with an orange centre, greenish or grey-olive gills, and the mushroom itself is very bitter. Plums and custard is conditionally edible, sulphur tuft is poisonous.

There is a third frequent guest on conifer stumps, the conifer tuft: by its cap it is almost a twin of the sulphur tuft, but its gills are grey. We have found plums and custard and conifer tuft ourselves, and below we go through our photos: what to look at, what to check and why a single glance at the cap settles nothing.

First, turn the mushroom over

We came across this cluster of yellow mushrooms by a mossy pine stump at the end of September. The caps are yellow, the mushrooms sit tightly packed among the pine needles, but the gills are not visible in the photo. And from this shot you honestly cannot name the species: several different mushrooms with caps like these grow on wood, and some of them are poisonous.

So the first rule at any stump: pick one mushroom and look at the gills. The colour of the gills tells you more here than the colour of the cap. The second rule: examine each mushroom separately, because different species can grow side by side on the same stump.

Plums and custard: purple velvet on yellow

Plums and custard (*Tricholomopsis rutilans*) lives on dead conifer wood: on pine and spruce stumps, roots and fallen trunks, often under moss. Its 4–12 cm cap is golden yellow but densely covered in tiny purple-red hairs and scales. From a distance the mushroom looks red, while up close you can see the yellow background showing through where the scales have rubbed off.

In our photo, plums and custard held in a hand in a pine forest, September. The cap looks dusted with purple velvet, and where the scales have rubbed off there is a yellow patch. The cap edge is still slightly rolled under: this is a young mushroom.

It grows in small groups at the base of a stump or on roots, and its bright caps can be seen from afar. Here are several plums and custard mushrooms by an old pine stump among moss and needles.

The gills of plums and custard: yellow as a yolk

Turn plums and custard over, and the doubts disappear. The gills are crowded, broad and bright yellow, the colour of egg yolk, framed by the purple, scaly rim of the cap. The stem is yellow too, with the same purple scales on its lower part. There is no ring. The spore print is whitish.

In the photo, next to the upturned mushroom you can also see young ones emerging from under the stump. Compare this contrast, sunny gills and a purple cap, with what comes next.

Sulphur tuft: a smooth yellow cap

Sulphur tuft (*Hypholoma fasciculare*) breaks down the wood of both broadleaf and conifer trees and turns up for almost the whole warm season, from spring to late autumn. The cap is 2–7 cm, smooth, without scales, sulphur yellow, and orange or rusty in the centre. It grows in tight clusters where the stems seem gathered into a bouquet at the base.

The key feature, once again, is the gills. In young mushrooms they are sulphur yellow, then they turn greenish and grey-olive, and in old ones they darken almost to black from the spores. The stem is yellow, turning rusty towards the base; there is no true ring, at most a dark band left by the remains of the veil.

Raw sulphur tuft is very bitter. If you really want to check, touch a tiny raw piece with your tongue and spit it out immediately. But remember: according to several field guides, the bitterness may disappear with cooking while the toxin remains, so in the frying pan or in a mix with other mushrooms it will no longer give itself away. The colour of the gills and the smooth cap usually give you the answer without any tasting.

Conifer tuft: almost a twin, but with grey gills

Conifer tuft (*Hypholoma capnoides*) is the closest relative of the sulphur tuft, and from above the two are almost impossible to tell apart. But it lives only on conifer wood, and its gills are different.

We found this group at the end of May by an old rotten stump. Look at the colour transition: the cap is orange in the centre and lightens to sulphur yellow towards the edge. No velvet, no scales, the surface is smooth and moist. The sulphur tuft has exactly this kind of cap too, so you cannot identify the species by it alone.

The answer, again, is underneath. In conifer tuft the gills are whitish or pale grey at first, and with age turn grey and brownish, with a lilac tinge from the spores, but they never turn greenish. In our photo the mushroom is turned over: the gills are grey, the stem is yellow, and behind it you can see the rest of the cluster on the stump. Put this shot next to the yellow gills of plums and custard, and the difference becomes obvious.

Field guides consider conifer tuft edible, and it has no bitterness. But the risk here lies not in the mushroom itself but in its neighbours: it is easy to confuse both with the poisonous sulphur tuft and with the deadly poisonous funeral bell (*Galerina marginata*), which also grows on conifer wood. That is why we advise beginners not to pick it.

Feature by feature

• Cap. Plums and custard: purple-red velvety scales on a yellow background. Sulphur tuft: smooth, sulphur yellow, with an orange centre.
• Gills. Plums and custard: bright yellow, like a yolk. Sulphur tuft: sulphur yellow, then greenish and olive, dark in old mushrooms. Conifer tuft: whitish, then grey and grey-brown, with no green.
• Stem. Plums and custard: yellow with purple scales lower down. Sulphur tuft: yellow, rusty towards the base, no scales.
• Where it grows. Plums and custard: almost only on conifer wood. Sulphur tuft: on any wood, more often broadleaf.
• How it grows. Plums and custard: in small groups by a stump. Sulphur tuft: in tight clusters of dozens of mushrooms.
• Taste. Plums and custard: bland or slightly bitter, smelling of rotting wood. Sulphur tuft: sharply bitter when raw.
• Spore print. Plums and custard: whitish. Sulphur tuft: purple-brown.
• Edibility. Plums and custard is conditionally edible. Sulphur tuft is poisonous.

Who else turns yellow on pine stumps

Pine stumps gather a whole crowd of yellow and rusty mushrooms, so keep one more in mind.

• Prunes and custard (*Tricholomopsis decora*), a close relative of plums and custard, also lives on conifer wood and also has yellow gills. But its cap is golden yellow with tiny grey-brown or dark brown scales, not purple ones. It is found much more rarely.

The true honey fungus also grows on stumps, and it is precisely the honey fungus that sulphur tuft is most often confused with. Its key features are a membranous ring on the stem, pale cream gills and small dark scales on the cap. We covered this in detail in the article false honey fungi: how to tell them from the real ones.

Is plums and custard worth picking?

Plums and custard is conditionally edible. Old field guides listed it as edible after boiling, though they did not recommend it, while modern ones rate it as a poor-quality or even inedible mushroom because of its slightly bitter taste of rotting wood. We found no reports of serious poisoning by it. If you do pick it, take only young mushrooms: they are boiled for 15 minutes, the water is poured off, and then they are cooked as usual. But honestly: the flesh is cottony and the taste is mediocre. This is a mushroom worth knowing by sight, not necessarily one to bring home. For how to handle Tricholoma-type mushrooms in the kitchen, read the article how to clean and cook Tricholoma mushrooms.

With sulphur tuft the conversation is short: it does not go in the basket. Signs of poisoning, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, do not appear right away but several hours after the meal: from 3 to 10, depending on the source. In severe cases, dehydration, convulsions, liver damage and even death have been described. In 1956 in Japan, four children from one family died after a dish of these mushrooms. If this happens, call emergency services (112 in the EU, 103 in Ukraine) and follow our guide to first aid for mushroom poisoning. Keep the leftover mushrooms for the doctors.