Giant clubClavariadelphus pistillaris

The giant club (Clavariadelphus pistillaris), also called the common club coral, is a large club fungus that's rare across much of Europe. It looks less like a coral than a pestle or a truncheon: a single, unbranched, thick club 7 to 30 cm tall, yellow to ochre, with a rounded top. It's protected in Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Russia, and rare in Britain, Ireland and northern Europe. Please leave it where it grows.

Is it edible? Sources disagree. Norway's 2024 list of edible mushrooms includes the genus, and Russian sources call it edible but poor and bitterish. The British guide First Nature calls it inedible, while noting that it's widely reported as edible, and quotes the American mycologist David Arora, who found it reminiscent of stale rope. When sources disagree we take the safer view, so our catalogue lists it as inedible.

It's easy to recognise. A young club is pale yellow to ochre yellow, then turns ochre, pinkish brown or reddish brown, sometimes with a violet tinge. The surface is smooth or wrinkled lengthwise, and the top is blunt and rounded. It bruises brown or purplish brown where handled or cut. The flesh is firm and white at first and becomes soft and spongy in old specimens.

The giant club grows on the ground in broadleaved woods, most often under beech, but also with lime, hornbeam and oak, and in southern Europe often under oak. It favours chalky or limestone soils and often comes up among moss and leaf litter. It appears singly or in twos and threes from late summer to late autumn, with most records in mid-autumn, and around the Mediterranean it can last into winter. It's fairly common in southern Europe.