(20 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)
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The Miller
Edible 
Autumn 
Summer 
This is not a mushroom for novice foragers as it looks like the deadly poisonous Clitocybe dealbata or rivulosa and great care should be taken when trying to identify this species.
| Mushroom Type | |
| Common Names | The Miller (EN), The Sweetbread Mushroom, Cap Melinydd (CY), Bruzdniczek Największy (PL), Kajsza Lisztgomba (HU) |
| Scientific Name | Clitopilus prunulus |
| Season Start | Jun |
| Season End | Nov |
| Average Mushroom height (CM) | 5-8 |
| Average Cap width (CM) | 6-9 |
Cap
6-9 cm. White to porcelain white with a fine suede like surface when dry. Starts fairly round but develops very uneven lobed edges and a depressed centre.
Gills
White turning to pink as the pink spores colour them. Strongly decurrent, running down the stem.
Stem
4-7 cm long, 0.5-1.2 cm diameter. White with slight grey hints and not always joined to the middle of the cap and can be quite eccentric.
Flesh
White/grey white.
Habitat
In mixed woodland in clearings especially coniferous woodland, hedgerows and roadsides.
Possible Confusion
Can look very like the Deadly Poisonous Fool’s Funnel (Clitocybe rivulosa) which seems to be merged with the former Ivory Funnel (Clitocybe dealbata) although these generally grow in rings in grassland. The best id for The Miller is the smell, like raw dough in polite company but described more accurately as spermatazoic in some mycology books.
Spore Print
Pink. Ellipsoid.
Taste / Smell
Strong mushroom taste when cooked but smells of raw dough.
Frequency
Common.
8 comments for The Miller
These look uncannily like st georges too at a glance. Are there any obvious differences in telling these apart?
The St Georges Mushroom has a stouter stem, a lot more flesh above the gills and has a distinct smell of either sawdust, paper or watermelon, depending who you ask and the Miller is smaller, thinner, has decurrent gills and smells of raw dough. The Miller prefers a woodland or hedgerow habitat, the St Georges prefers open grassland although can occasionally be found in grass next to hedgerows or woodland.
St. George’s day is in March, the miller would not be around then
I recently found a bunch of very large Miller looking mush in and around an old tree stump in a hedgerow. The caps were 30ish cm wide and they smelt very mealy strong. All other descriptions just like the Miller. Any ideas?
They sound like the Giant Funnel but without seeing them, I can’t give you an ID.
Keep finding miller type mushrooms that have a strong mustard taste on the tongue when raw. Any ideas?
See the milkcaps, some of the white milkcaps are strongly peppery.
Thank you for the helpful smell notes! On a recent walk I found lots of these white wonky mushrooms with decurrant gills and a tacky cap (after rain) that smells like semen. Until now I hadn’t managed to identify them in the field or afterwards, which was annoying me! My books describe the smell as ‘mealy’, which I’ve read lots of times in the past and never had any idea what that was supposed to mean.