Olive oysterlingPanellus serotinus

Yes, it's a good edible mushroom. Safe to pick — the combination of an olive cap, a lateral stem, a late season and growth on deciduous trees rarely leads to confusion with dangerous species. Take young fruit bodies.

Peel the tough skin off the cap and remove the gills of old mushrooms, which may be bitter. You can fry it straight away (10-15 min) or boil it for 5-10 min and then fry or stew. Good for pickling. Take only young fruit bodies — old ones are stringy and slightly bitter.

On the trunks and logs of deciduous trees — mainly alder, aspen, poplar, beech, willow, less often oak and maple. In groups of 3-10 fruit bodies, often overlapping like roof tiles. In floodplain forests, along riverbanks, in old parks and tree-lined avenues.

Throughout the forest and forest-steppe zones: the Carpathians, Prykarpattia, Polissia, the Western/Right-Bank/Left-Bank Forest-Steppe. In the steppe — in floodplain forests and park plantings. Especially common in river floodplains with alder and willow.

October–November. This is a truly late species — it starts fruiting when most other mushrooms have already finished. Peak — mid-to-late October. It can fruit until the end of November and tolerates the first light frosts.

Occasional finds in the second half of September do happen, especially in the Carpathians and Prykarpattia when it turns cold early. But the main season is October–November. In September, Pleurotus ostreatus (the oyster mushroom), which fruits earlier, is usually still active.

With the oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus). Differences: the oyster mushroom's cap is gray-blue or gray-brown, the olive oysterling's is olive-greenish. The oyster mushroom's stem is short but noticeable; the olive oysterling's is almost absent. The oyster mushroom fruits earlier (September–November), the olive oysterling mostly in October–November. Both species are edible — a mix-up isn't dangerous.

Among mushrooms that grow in fans on deciduous trunks in late autumn with an olive cap, there are no seriously dangerous lookalikes. The key thing is to make sure the mushroom is growing on wood and has a gilled hymenophore. Bracket fungi have a pored hymenophore and woody flesh.