Poplar knightРядовка тополева

You can, but without much enthusiasm. Its culinary quality is mediocre, it must be boiled, and people with sensitive digestion may feel discomfort even after cooking. If there are no tastier mushrooms in the poplar stands, you can add it to a mix. It is not worth making a dish from poplar knight alone.

A spore print is a must the first time you meet it. Leave a cap on white paper for 12-24 h: T. populinum gives white, webcaps' is rusty orange. Second check: young webcaps have a cobweb-like veil (cortina) between the cap margin and the stem; the knight has none. Third: habitat — poplar knight grows strictly under poplars, webcaps mostly in conifer forests.

Boil it for 15-20 min in salted water and discard the water — no exceptions. Then fry with onion, stew with potatoes, add to soups or pickle. Make your first portion small (50 g) and check how you react. Drying works fine.

In poplar stands — shelterbelts, parks, poplar groves, riverside floodplains, man-made plantings. Strictly near poplars (Populus alba, P. nigra, P. tremula). It often grows in groups of 5-15 fruiting bodies in the grass near the trunks.

All over Ukraine, wherever there are poplar stands. Especially abundant in the forest-steppe and steppe (Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions), where poplars are the main shelterbelt tree.

August — November, peaking in September–October. In the southern regions it can fruit until the first frosts.

With T. pessundatum — also brown, but the cap is always slimy-sticky, and it grows in pine forests. With T. imbricatum (matt knight) — in pine forests, darker, with a "tiled" scaly cap. With young webcaps (Cortinarius spp.) — rusty-orange spore print, cobweb-like cortina. The key check: habitat (poplars mean this knight, pines mean something else) and a spore print.