Tag Archives: St George’s Mushroom

Spring foraging on the Llangollen Canal

Email: geoffdann@hotmail.com
26/04/2017

St George’s Mushrooms (Calocybe gambosa)

I have just returned from a week spent cruising the prettiest of Britain’s canals – the Llangollen, which runs from Hurleston in Cheshire to Llangollen in north Wales. This was my third holiday on this waterway (I love canals almost as much as I love fungi…), but the first time I’ve done it in spring, and I have learned something new about St George’s Mushrooms. This species can turn up in all sorts of places, but it has a liking for some habitats in particular. One of these, apparently, is the towpath of the Llangollen canal. I lost count of how many I passed last week (more than twenty lots), and almost all of them were in precisely the same habitat: the area between steel piling lining the canal, and the path itself. None were growing on parts of the towpath without piling, none were

St George’s Mushrooms. The Ribwort Plantain (Plantago lanceolata) in the top right of this photo is also edible.

on the worn down area that people walk on, and only one group were on the far side of the path, away from the canal. What is it about this precise habitat that they like so much? Are they as plentiful in the same habitat on other canals? I don’t know the answers to these questions and I’d be interested to hear from anybody who does.

Judging by the reports I’m getting from other parts of the country, it is a bit patchy for St George’s this year. The reason is fairly obvious: it has been very dry and in many places the ground is totally parched. We need some rain. I’ve personally seen none at all yet down south, although one or two other people have seen a few. They are more plentiful further north in the British Isles, where it has been a bit wetter.

Cowslip (Primula veris)

There was no shortage of other foragables available, of course. Here are some of the best.

A lot of wild flowers are edible. Picking Cowslips is frowned on in some quarters – they aren’t as common as they once were. But they are definitely edible, and used to be popular candied, or even just eaten fresh with cream.

Lady’s Smock (or “Cuckooflower”) (Cardamine pratensis)

Ramsons (or “Wild Garlic”)(Allium ursinum)

Lady’s Smock is typically found in meadows, but is happy to take up residence by the side of a lock overflow channel.

 

 

 

 

 

Ramsons (aka “Wild Garlic”) were abundant at the Welsh end of the canal, not so much at the English end. The combination of Ramsons and St George’s Mushrooms works well.

 

 

 

 

St George’s Mushrooms and Ramsons with Lady’s Smock in lemon juice.

Ramsons and St George’s Mushrooms, with Lady’s Smock:

Chop the St George’s Mushrooms and fry for 5 minutes in olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, then add chopped Ramsons leaves and fry for another minute or two. Allow to cool, then add lemon juice and Lady’s Smock flowers. Serve chilled.

 

 

 

Larch (Larix decidua) needle tea

There are quite a lot of Larch trees lining the towpath of the Llangollen, and these can provide two sorts of food. The soft inner bark is edible, and can be ground and used like flour. In spring, the fresh needles (Larch is deciduous, and re-grows its needles each year) can be made into a tea which has a number of claimed medical properties, including being high in vitamin C and “expelling flatulence”.

 

 

Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris)

Marsh Marigolds were also very abundant. This species is slightly toxic and should not be consumed in large quantities, but the young leaves are edible and the unopened flower buds can be pickled and used like capers.

 

 

 

Pignut (Conopodium majus)

In some shady areas there were pignuts on the towpath. These have tasty tubers (the “nuts”), which can be found by following the stem underground. The tubers are frequently not directly under the plant, and the base of the stem is rather fragile, so finding them is not always as easy as you think it is going to be.

 

 

 

Pignut tuber

It is illegal to uproot wild plants without the landowner’s permission, so I left the ones I found last week – the picture of the tubers is from a couple of years ago.

 

 

 

 

 

More St George’s Mushrooms

Sorrel (Rumex acetosa)

Sorrel is a well-known edible wild plant, and reasonably common along the towpath of the Llangollen canal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hogweed (Heraclium sphondylium)

Hogweed is extremely common on uncultivated land all over the British Isles. It is a bit of an overlooked delicacy, and at its best right now, as it produces its most vigorous leaf shoots. These should be cooked in butter – loads of it. Just keep adding more butter to the frying pan until it doesn’t soak any more up!

 

 

 

 

 

Wavy Bitter-cress (Cardamine flexuosa) and Hemlock Water-dropwort (Oenanthe crocata). Dinner and death, side by side.

The last plant picture is of two species, growing side by side on one of the overflow channels that carry water past the locks on this canal (the canal is used to transport water from the River Dee to the reservoir at Hurleston, so these overflow channels are always full of fast-flowing water). On the left is Wavy Bittercress – an excellent edible salad leaf, often found in damp places, that isn’t particularly bitter, despite its name. On the right is the most dangerous toxic wild plant in the UK, measured by the number of deaths and serious cases of poisoning – Hemlock Water-dropwort, which can be mistaken for various edible members of its family (Apiaceae), most notably Wild Celery, which also lives in an aquatic habitat.

Even more St George’s Mushrooms

And finally, no blog about a holiday on the Llangollen Canal would be complete without a picture of the most spectacular aqueduct on the planet: Pontcysyllte (“pont-ker-sulth-tee”). With nothing but half an inch of lead between the boat and a sheer 120ft drop to the Dee valley, it is enough to give modern-day health-and-safety officials nightmares. Telford’s masterpiece was already something of a white elephant when it was completed, because it cost so much to build that no money was left to complete the rest of the proposed main line of the canal to Chester, and because in the decade between its inception and completion, cheaper sources of coal had been discovered than those in the hills to the north of the aqueduct. Worth every penny, though.

St George’s Mushrooms

17/05/2013

Calocybe Gambosa, or St George’s Mushrooms, are one of the few edible fungi that always appear in the spring.  The name comes from their uncanny habit of appearing on St George’s day (April 23rd).  They were one day late this year, although I have not seen a large quantity of pickable size until today.  This is normal – they start to appear around St George’s day (rather unusual for them to be early) and then continue to grow for several weeks, finally disappearing with the first really hot weather.

They are saprophytic, and grow in a wide variety of habitats (woodland and grassland, by paths, and also in gardens and cemeteries), often in rings.  They are very likely to be growing somewhere near you, right now.

St George's Mushrooms (Calocybe gambosa).  Picture taken on May 17th, in Brighton, Sussex.

St George’s Mushrooms (Calocybe gambosa). Picture taken on May 17th, in Brighton, Sussex.

They are reasonably safe for beginners to pick.  If they grew in the autumn they wouldn’t be, because they are white-gilled mushrooms, and any mushroom which appears in summer/autumn and has gills that stay white should be treated with major caution by foragers because of the possibility of confusion with the deadly amanitas (in this case the destroying angel and the white form of the death cap).  Those deadly amanitas don’t appear in the spring, so St George’s mushrooms aren’t usually confused with them, and there’s nothing else dangerous that looks like these, appear in the spring, and smell like these.  The smell is a dead give-away – once you know the smell then there is nothing you could mix them up with, and even for somebody who has never found them before, it helps to know you are looking for something with a strong and distinctive odour.

Few wild mushrooms provoke as much disagreement over palatability as these.  They are the fungal equivalent of marmite; some people love them, others hate them.  There is also a wide range of opinion of how best the taste should be described (bonemeal, bread dough, melons…) Because of their strong taste, it is inadvisable to just use them as substitutes for normal mushrooms in recipes.  They are traditionally served with liver, but will work just as well served on their own, fried in butter, with just about anything.  What they don’t do is combine with other flavours as you’d expect normal mushrooms to do, so be experimental, but don’t assume that everything you try with them will work!

Happy hunting,

Geoff