On wood

Why wood matters to fungi

Wood (trunks, branches, roots) is a giant store of carbohydrates locked in complex polymers (cellulose and lignin). Mushrooms on wood perform the most important job in nature: they turn hard wood into soft, moist humus, returning minerals to the soil.

The most important mushrooms on wood

For a forager, wood is a substrate that demands attention. Edible mushrooms on it often grow in large numbers, but they are easy to confuse with poisonous ones:

1. Honey fungus (Armillaria mellea): Grows in huge clusters on stumps, trunks and roots (of both broadleaf and conifer trees). It stands out by the ring on its stem and the small scales on its cap.

2. Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus): Large "cascades" of gray mushrooms with no distinct stem, growing on broadleaf wood.

3. Bracket fungi (Polypores): A huge group of fungi with a tubular or porous hymenophore that grow like shelves on trees (chicken of the woods, dryad's saddle). They are usually as tough as cork, so they are used mainly in medicine (chaga) or as tinder for starting fires.

M.Ya. Zerova warns firmly: if you pick small "honey fungus" on wood, you must know their deadly double by sight — the funeral bell (Galerina marginata).

It grows on the same wood as the sheathed woodtuft (summer honey fungus). It has a similar brown color and also has a ring on its stem. But it contains the death cap's poison (amatoxin).

- How to tell them apart? Sheathed woodtufts grow in tight clusters (from one base), while galerinas usually grow nearby but singly, each from its own spot on the stump.