Identifying the Wood Mushroom, The Yellow Stainer and the Horse Mushroom 

My husband and I learnt to begin foraging for mushroom by going on this guys course 5 years ago and this is the first year we have not foraged this year due to the birth of our daughter. Our dried mushroom stash is getting low 😢. I miss it so much but can’t wait to teach my little Willow how to forage in the future. Love your videos!

Ah the Yellow Stainer, my first ever faux pas...and one of my first ever forages. I was on a film set (All Is True), killing time waiting for another scene as a double for an antagonist and I spotted some agaric mushrooms growing in a field near to the filming location (right down the road from Eton College). So I went to catering, asked for a few cardboard meal-boxes and went and picked them, both smelling for the aniseed (coulda sworn a few had it, but most smelt close enough to the ones I'd bought from the shop up to then) and looking for the yellow stain. Well they did both, but hey, it was a free meal for a man on a budget, so I took them home and spent the rest of the afternoon dreamingof the feta-stuffed mushrooms I would cook the next day. Next day rolls around and I'm sinking about 45 minutes and a few extra bob into prepping these mushrooms, feta mixed with the fried stems of mushrooms & onions & white wine & hebs, ignore the slight yellowing, that's to be expected; plonk the stuffing into the mushroom caps (gill-side up) and put on a oiled tray and into the oven. Wait 20 minutes and hope for the best smells and taste. 20 Minutes later, I open the oven door, and yep, there it is...the phenol smell reminding me of the sweet smell of TCP reminding me of the schadenfreude moments that my brother would need it after a BMX scrape. I knew I had a few Yellow Stainers on my plate tonight, but it was impossible to tell which was the cap of a stainer and which was just integrated into the stuffing mix. So not to be fiscally outdone, I chowed down whatever I could palate, washed down with some cheap tins of lager and slept well enough that night. The next day, I had a party I was excited to go to....ah the 20-something years....anyway, I'd woken knowing that I'd eaten what I shouldn't have. The Yellow Stainer had teamed up with the cheap lager and struck me probably around my intestines. I had a healthy breakfast, but a leasurely hour later, my gut demanded my new chair be the Toilet. And it was there I sat, on and off, for the next couple of hours wondering if I'd make it to the party. It was a journey of becoming aware of every tissue and mechanoceptor across my torso, but I feel like my hedonistic demands would carry me through...and they did! Made it to that party later on with a slightly unsavoury story of the day: "I survived a common mushroom poisoning today!" And that's what began my curious adventure into foraging, transfixed by the highs and the lows of it all. I must say, the next time I made the same Horse Mushroom/Yellow Stainer mistake, I didn't get my afternoon ruined at all. I think my body just got tolerant after the first time. I hope you get as lucky too!

Thank you so much Marlow, I really really enjoyed watching you talk about these mushrooms. I really really appreciate all your knowledge and expertise too. Please stay safe and well too xxx Mags

I really love the sweet aniseed mushroom smell you get from horse mushrooms.

I once found a wood mushroom without having heard of it before, once I had ID'd it i was confident it wasn't toxic and it was delicious

Thank you for explaining😊 my boyfriend just found lot of them and we wasn't sure with mushrom is that but now we know, and they are soo tasty 😋

Bravo pour cette vidéo de champignons. Magnifiques images et merci pour le partage !

I actually found a big one looking like the horse mushroom today. Unfortunately it was Right besides a road of heavy traffic so I didn't take it home. Just looked at it for a bit. Never found one since I started foraging for mushrooms a few months back, but I found a false saffron milk cap in perfect condition, so at least I had something new to try for dinner!

I'm so grateful for this video. Watched it last week and stumbled across some horse mushrooms yesterday afternoon. Delicious they were too. Although not as impressive as the 1.5kg giant puffball we also found which we've nicknamed Stan. He is sitting in our kitchen being eaten one giant slice at a time.

waaaa super useful thanks !!!!!

Oh good!! new content💚🇬🇧🌱🍄

Thank you so much for this video! I’ve just had a fruit of horse mushrooms / strainers so I need to be sure of it

I'm fascinated by mushrooms have been for years it seems the more you learn the harder it is mostly but I will be forever thirsty for more knowledge and will continue to forage and identify ....brilliant video as always been watching your channel for years now keep up the good work and thank you 🍄👍

Hi Marlo, love your videos. The most valuable part for me is when you describe the poisonous lookalikes when showing us the edible mushrooms. In this case would have been good to show or describe the difference between the death cap, emphasizing the gills shouldn't be white? Not many other channels out there emphasizing this as much as you. Cheers and keep it up buddy!

Thank you for your videos, they’re so valuable I love them!

The smell of A. silvicola reminds me of marizpan

Very helpful, keep them coming.

Thank you for these videos, really well made and informative.

I just ate some yellow stainers they were fine. People said they're toxic. I cooked mine with noodles and added pasta sauce . No bad reaction. Tasted like really strong mushroom flavor earthy but not dirty a little bit phenol-ey. That was more of an aftertaste. Wouldn't recommend raw. Decent survival food but I wouldn't eat a bunch. Oh and I got some blueits which are delicious and tasty.😁 Honestly i think this group of agarics are just fine to eat.

I had a huge crop of Agaricus xanthodermus in my lawn. I brought one inside for closer inspection and identification, and it stunk the room out.

So tasty

Had horse mushrooms first time this year. While doing the tests I was unsure as the mushrooms smelled like almond to me but it was absolutely delicious. Like you said very underrated

I can often id yellow stainers by looks alone. Especially when they're closed capped they tend to have a more cube shape (if that makes sense) to their cap. Considering they're round' cube is probbaly the wrong term but they do have almost right angles to them that you can pick up on with experience. Admittedly that's not a 100% way of ascertaining it as a stainer. But it's a very show offy way of pointing it out to others and then providing further evidence to back up your at a glance id

Great timing, I found these today was hoping for the horse as i walked up to them but got the stainer, the smell was alarms TCP not very appealing.

Extremely helpful. I was able to identify them by aniseed aroma which is very distinctive, thank you! What's your tip for dealing with the small worms in the ones you forage?

I thought you said if they stain yellow they are poises

Thanks for this found on the walk to meet the Mrs lots of smallish groups of these im guessing they're the yellow strainers as the lights low as have yellowing & a kind of almost sickly sweet tcp'ish smell not horrible though

Hi I found a pink/reddish staining Agaric last week. Is it possible to cover these types also at some point please?

Hi Marlow, another really informative video. Just watching the Wood mushroom segment and noticed the bulging base of the stem, can this be confused with a volva/egg sack and how do you tell the difference. Recently found what I believe are shaggy parasols with very obvious bulges which to my untrained eye assumed were egg sacks.. Thanks great content as usual.

Are the yellow stainers more variable in size than the field mushrooms? Field mushrooms tend to be small, horse big, but can yellow stainers be the same size as both?

Could anyone help me ID a mushroom I found today (12/11). It had already been picked and was lying upside down near to a carpark of a mixed woodland, so I can't confirm whereabouts it was growing. The mushroom has a lemony/orange coloured cap (similar to a Lemon drizzle cake) a very dark orange underside which at first, I thought was made of smooth plastic as it was so tough ! The cap measures 10cm across. The base is star shaped and again very hard, almost 'woody'. The cap was difficult to cut in half, but once completed, it had light orange/lemon flesh. There are lines/ridges running from the stem to the rim of the cap and have the appearance of gills, but they are not true gills. I have never come across this type of mushroom before and can't find anything similar by searching online. Hopefully somebody can point me in the right direction.

What's house mushoom test like ?

must mention slugs were having a field day on them.

I would like too see you cooking and eating mushrooms

Do you do local guiding, West Sussex..

Very helpful material . Autumn - Winter mushrooms pls

I found a whole bunch of mushrooms in grass, but it had very white gills so I left it alone was I right to do this or did I miss something special. it was in Scotland.

Hi does the wood mushrooms also go yellow in microwave

I discovered a lovely crop of mushrooms, some quite large growing under my privet hedge this morning. I'm usually pretty good at mushroom identification, at least I thought I was. But thought I'd check carefully. Definitely identified as a white Agaricus, I thought possibly a wood mushroom. I really considered this to be a wonderful extra product from my garden. However a slight yellow stain but not particularly smelling of ink/phenol/chemical made me a little wary.....as soon as I tried frying one off in a little oil...dreadful smell of chemical, like some unidentifiable evil paunstripping cleaning product...most unappetising....and strongly staining yellow....so in the bin with the lot...not even in the compost...I have lots of lovely food from my garden but that ain't one of them. Stinky inky nasty toady things..... not a toadstool but might just as well be...steer well clear all of you....!!! xx 🟡 🍄🍄🍄🍄....xx

I found many many on a bank. The smell is like listerine

Amazing how all the same genus and look similar how one can be poisonous!

Can you please help me identify the mushrooms I have found as I think you may be the best person to help me do so.. plz message me back asap… thankyou

I picked a few horse mushrooms from a grass field in a London park, and it made me throw up when I ate a baby one raw. A few days latter I fried and ate another mushroom that I picked from the same batch. When cooked, it did not cause me to throw up, but it caused me to be hyper active mentally, not able to sleep. I only got around 3 hours of sleep sleep that night. Also, when I ate the baby mushroom raw, it also caused me to have "VERY VIVID" dreams. In one dream there vas a lion chasing me and some friends in the street. We managed to get in to a car. Then the lion was about to attack some other by standers. We gave a hand gun to one of the by standers and he shot the lion multiple times. The lion was covered in blood frim all the gun shot wounds but was still standing there casually looking at the guy who was shoting it. Like the asian guy who shot bullet tooth Tony, in the movie "Snatch". 😅 I can laugh about it now but during the dreaming it was freaking very real, and terrifying! I do not have this kind of vivid dreams. That is why I believe it was the mushroom that caused it.

I tried cooking Yellow stainer by inadvertance. My god the smell is horrendous, atrocious, like pouring very nasty chemicals in your pan. If only all bad mushrooms would be that obvious !