Ringless Honey Mushrooms: Armillaria tabescens

NEVER EAT ANYTHING YOU ARE UNSURE OF! I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS TO YOU BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T CORRECTLY IDENTIFY SOMETHING! Lawyers made me say it.

One of the common urban mushrooms is the Ringless Honey Mushroom, Armillaria tebescens . It is a parasitic mushroom that infects hardwoods and roots.  Usually a summer mushroom, they fruit from wood (often below the ground so it looks like they are growing in soil) and only wood. That is actually a diagnostic feature. If it looks like it is growing in soil and you pull it up to find it is growing on a tree root, there you have it.

They are a distinctive looking mushroom that grows in clusters.   They tend to have very long stems which are not edible.  The stems have striations and look very straw like.

The caps tend to have these little hair like structures on them. They are a dry mushroom that often looks wet.  The flesh looks white or tan when broken.

The gills run from the margins of the cap down onto the stem (see below). In the picture below, you can see the little hairs that tend to form on the stems, kind of like they are peeling.

Here is a close up look at the cap.

This is a spore print. A spore print is when you lay a cap on paper or glass to see what color the spores are. This is often helpful in identifying hard to tell species.  Ringless Honeys leave white spore prints.  We like to print on glass and then put it over different colored backgrounds to get a better idea what the spore looks like.

These are prone to insects and insect larvae. They tend to just pop out of the ground after a good rain and then rot in a very short period of time. The bugs move fast because of this. If you can find them and positively ID them, they go great with steak! You just eat the caps and you should be careful the first time you eat them; some people (myself included) get gastro intestinal upset from them. It was suggested to me by a fellow mycophile that if you cook them in water first and then change the water it might help.