White saddleHelvella crispa

Yes, after mandatory boiling for 15-20 minutes with the water poured away. BUT its culinary value is low, and the risk of poisoning with insufficient treatment is real. Our advice: admire it, photograph it, but don't put it in your basket — there are much better autumn mushrooms.

Like all Helvella, it contains gyromitrin-type compounds. They destroy red blood cells and pass into the water during boiling. The raw mushroom can cause acute gastroenteritis with hemolytic effects after 6-12 hours.

On soil in deciduous and mixed forests, at forest edges, among shrubs, in parks. It likes damp leaf litter and shady spots. It can grow within cities — in old parks with broadleaf trees.

A widespread species throughout the forest and forest-steppe zones. Finds are recorded from the Carpathians and Prykarpattia to the Left Bank and Polissia. In the steppe and Crimea it's rarer, only in plantations and parks.

July–November. That's a long season — the mushroom tolerates cool, damp weather. Peak fruiting is September–October. In a long, warm autumn it can fruit into the first days of November.

Very rarely. It's a summer–autumn species. If in May–June you see something similar with a saddle-shaped cap, it's more likely Helvella acetabulum (a cup with ribs) or another spring species.

With Helvella lacunosa — it has the same saddle-shaped cap and ribbed stem, but it is dark gray (sometimes almost black), while the White saddle is white. Color is the main difference. Crispa sometimes has a yellowish tinge, but it's never gray, let alone black.

Only superficially — both are ascomycetes, both have a hollow stem. But a morel's cap is clearly honeycombed (with pits and ridges), while Helvella's is lobed and smooth on the outside. The seasons differ too: morels in spring, Helvella in autumn.