Spring

The main spring trophies (and dangers)

According to Roger Phillips, the spring forest hides both the finest delicacies and treacherous poisons:

1. Morels (Morchella): The kings of spring. Their cap looks like a honeycomb or a sponge. These are fully edible, incredibly tasty (and expensive) mushrooms. They appear in April-May in sun-warmed clearings, old apple orchards and on forest fire sites (black morel). They are always hollow inside.

2. False morels (Gyromitra): The deadly danger of spring. A false morel's cap looks like crumpled fabric or a brain (without regular honeycomb cells). The False morel contains gyromitrin — a toxin that acts similarly to rocket fuel and is not always fully removed even by repeated boiling. In Europe, picking them is strictly prohibited.

3. St George's mushroom (Calocybe gambosa): Appears in May (often around St George's Day, hence the name). It's a firm, white gilled mushroom that grows in "fairy rings" in meadows and has a very strong smell of fresh flour.

4. Spring pinkgill (Entoloma vernum): A poisonous gilled mushroom that inexperienced foragers often confuse with edible May mushrooms.

Why do they grow in spring?

Spring mushrooms need very specific conditions: the ground must be thoroughly soaked with meltwater, but the sun must warm it up sharply. That's why morels often grow on sandy soils or at forest edges, where the snow melts first and the ground warms quickly.

As soon as the real summer heat sets in and the ground dries out, the mycelium of spring mushrooms goes dormant until the next April.