Season
What is fruiting in May
10 of the species on this site fruit in May, and one of them is deadly. Seasons here are the ones on each species sheet, and they shift with latitude and with the year: a warm autumn runs late everywhere. Treat a month as a prompt to look, never as confirmation of what you have found.
Out this month and deadly
False morel. These are listed first below rather than buried, because the reason to know what is fruiting is at least as much about what to leave as what to take.
Deadly
False morel
Gyromitra esculenta
Cut it lengthwise. A true morel is one continuous hollow chamber from cap to stem base. This is stuffed.
white spore print
Toxic
Common inkcap
Coprinopsis atramentaria
Deliquescing grey cap in a cluster. Edible on its own, and that is the trap.
black spore print
Toxic
Sulphur tuft
Hypholoma fasciculare
Yellow-green gills. No edible clustered wood mushroom has them.
black spore print
Not worth eating
Chaga
Inonotus obliquus
Black cracked charcoal-like mass on a LIVING BIRCH, rusty orange inside.
brown spore print
Not worth eating
Turkey tail
Trametes versicolor
Fine WHITE PORES on the underside. The many look-alikes have a smooth underside, a maze-like one, or a rusty one.
white spore print
Edible, with conditions
Chicken of the woods
Laetiporus sulphureus, L. cincinnatus
A bright orange-and-yellow bracket on wood, with pores and no gills, soft enough to dent with a thumbnail.
white spore print
Edible, with conditions
Morel
Morchella americana, M. esculenta and relatives
Pitted like a honeycomb, and completely hollow when cut lengthwise.
white spore print
Edible, with conditions
Shaggy mane, lawyer's wig
Coprinus comatus
A tall shaggy white cylinder in disturbed grass. Once it starts to blacken at the edge, it is a mushroom you look at rather than eat.
black spore print
Edible
Wine cap, king stropharia
Stropharia rugosoannulata
The thick cogwheel ring on a wine-coloured cap in wood chips.
black spore print
Choice
Oyster mushroom
Pleurotus ostreatus and relatives
White decurrent gills on a stemless or side-stemmed fan growing from wood.
white spore print
Just starting
Chicken of the woods, Shaggy mane, lawyer's wig, Wine cap, king stropharia. Not out in April, out now.
Last month for these
Everything out in May carries on into June.
A month in a table is not an identification. Every edible species on this page has at least one lookalike, several of them serious, and the season overlaps too. Take the spore print.