Edible
Wine cap, king stropharia
Stropharia rugosoannulata
The character that does the work
The thick cogwheel ring on a wine-coloured cap in wood chips.
The specimen sheet, in examination order
01Cap
5 to 20 cm, wine red to chestnut when young, fading to buff, smooth and dry.
02Underside
Attached gills, pale grey then dark purple-grey with the spores.
03Stem, and the base
Thick, white, with a distinctive thick RIBBED ring like a cogwheel.
04Flesh, cut
White, firm.
05Spore print
06Where it grows
Wood chips, garden mulch, straw beds. Almost always on ground that a person has disturbed.
When to look
Typically May to Oct in the northern hemisphere. Fruiting swings by weeks with rainfall and by a month or more with latitude, so this is when to look rather than when it will be there.
North America and Europe, spread widely by landscaping mulch.
What is worth knowing about it
The easiest mushroom to cultivate outdoors by a wide margin: spread spawn in a mulch bed and it fruits for years with no further attention. That makes it the practical answer for anyone who wants wild-tasting mushrooms without the identification risk.
Confused with
- Various dark-spored mulch species
In the kitchen
Young firm buttons are the ones to take. Larger specimens go soft. It is one of the better mushrooms for the grill because the flesh is thick enough to survive it.
The techniques, and why they workGrowing it
This page tells you what to check. It does not tell you the mushroom in your hand is that species, and it cannot. If you are not certain, do not eat it. If you have already eaten something and feel unwell, contact a poison centre and keep an uncooked specimen.
Others in this group