Mushroom season is from June to October
The main collection time for meadow mushrooms is summer. Especially after a summer downpour or even a violent summer thunderstorm, you will find it on meadows and lawns. Between June and October you can always go stalking and search for famous mushroom meadows. Like the giant Bovist, the meadow mushroom does not tolerate artificially fertilized meadows - you should therefore be successful in your search on cow pastures and organically farmed areas.
also read
- Clean meadow mushrooms - do not wash!
- What to look for when collecting mushrooms
- How to prepare tasty tea or syrup from the Indian nettle
Caution, poisonous!
But be careful: the tasty meadow mushroom can be easily mistaken for very similar poisonous mushrooms such as the cap mushroom and the poisonous carbolic Egerling. The carbolic Egerling in particular can often be found where meadow mushrooms grow - sometimes the individual groups even mix. Therefore, you should precisely determine the individual mushrooms based on their characteristics.
Typical identifying features of the meadow mushroom
You can recognize a meadow mushroom by these characteristics:
cap
The hat is closed and spherical when young, open and hemispherical when ripe. Very old specimens even spread completely. The hat can be up to ten centimeters and larger in diameter.
Slats
The lamellae are pink when young. In older mushrooms, they turn brown, sometimes even black.
stalk
The stem is about as strong as a finger or thumb. It also has a ring.
flesh
The hat and stem are always white. The color does not change with age. The smell is pleasantly mild and mushroom.
In addition, meadow mushrooms have no tubers at the end of the stem, which is why you can use this feature to distinguish them from the poisonous death cap mushrooms. Only the edible aniseed mushroom, a relative of the meadow mushroom, has a sloping tuber on the stem. This turns yellow when touched.
Distinguish poison mushrooms
If the alleged meadow mushroom smells unpleasantly of carbolic, ink or “hospital” and the stalk turns chrome yellow when cut, it is poisonous carbolic mushrooms. Please throw it away immediately! The highly poisonous green leaf mushroom also looks very similar to the meadow mushroom. Every year it leads to numerous cases of poisoning, even if it does not actually grow in meadows, but only in the forest. However, if there are trees in the meadow or if the meadow is at the edge of the forest, the green caplet mushroom also dares to venture out. You can recognize it by the typically thickened bulbous foot.
Tips
If you want to be on the safe side, you can also grow mushrooms in your own cellar all year round.
