St George's Mushroom

Description

This wonderful iconic mushroom gets its name because it generally appear on St George’s Day, but mushrooms are wonderfully unpredictable and although they can be found growing on this day, I have just as often seen them in late March right through to June and even rarely in Autumn. You know it is a good eating mushroom when the French have given it a specific name and this one in France is known as Mousseron. The beauty of this white all over mushroom to me is based on a few things; it is a chunky mushroom that can be substantial so you only have to pick a few to get a meal worth. It commonly grows in parks, urban areas, gardens, hedgerows and fields so you generally stumble across them when you are not really looking out and about looking for mushrooms and when you do find them they usually grow in numbers (in 2013 my local park had around 1000 fruiting bodies).

There are a few species are worth double-checking your find against to be sure it is what it is include; the Entoloma family including Entoloma aprile (note the name for when it generally occurs!), though this family usually has clay-pink gills not white like St George’s Mushroom, the Inocybe family, these are generally smaller and usually have a distinctive nipple to the cap. There are a number of poisonous Clitocybes that grow in grassland too to make sure you have not picked, these are generally not as chunky as St George's Mushroom though. Use a field guide to ensure you have identified it correctly.