Mushrooms are in season in London, here's what you need to know
CBC
You might start noticing tiny white and brown mushrooms popping up in your lawn.
The scorching weather has made it hard for mushrooms to grow, but now, they are finally in season in London.
"There's quite a diversity of things starting to come out," said Grerg Thorn, a biology professor at Western University who has been studying mushrooms for around 40 years.
Mushrooms need moisture to grow, and Thorn said the season has been brought on by the recent rain and thunderstorms in the city.
Thorn said there's probably around a thousand species of mushrooms in London at the moment. One of the common mushrooms is called Agaricus, a wild relative of the store-bought pizza mushroom.
There are different types of Agaricus mushrooms. One of them coming into season in London is called Agaricus Arvensis. They are quite large, bright white and a little bit scaly. Those type of mushrooms grow in meadows.
Another mushroom coming out this season is the Chanterelle, a funnel shaped type of mushroom. They grow in the wood of beech and oak trees. It's a popular wild harvested commercial mushroom. There are multiple species of Chanterelle, but all of them are edible.
While mushrooms are in season now, not all of them are safe.
There's a poisonous mushroom in season in the city called Lepiota subincarnata, which can be deadly.
"One should be very careful about small kind of reddish brown mushrooms that are umbrella shaped," he said, adding that they have a ring around their stem and white gills.
He said the mushroom is common in people's gardens where there are wood chips.
Thorn said there isn't a straightforward answer when it comes to identifying which mushrooms are safe to eat.
"Unfortunately there's no simple rules," said Thorn.
Thorn compared it to picking blueberries, when you go out you don't pick any, you learn to recognize blueberry bushes.
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