The Miller
This is not a mushroom for novice foragers as it looks very 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, The Sweetbread Mushroom |
Scientific Name | Clitopilus prunulus |
Season Start | Jun |
Season End | Nov |
Average Mushroom height (CM) | 5 |
Average Cap width (CM) | 10 |
Cap
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
White with slight grey hints and not always joined to the middle of the cap and can be quite eccentric.
Possible Confusion
Can look very like the Deadly Poisonous Clitocybe dealbata or rivulosa 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.
3 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