Featured Fungus - Volvariella bombycina
Photo by Linda Gail Price
by Loulwa Soweid
It is an early spring morning, and you are walking in the woods. It has rained recently; the smell of petrichor is in the air, the earth around you is cool and damp, and it is humid out, but not unpleasantly so. People stroll through the woods for all sorts of reasons, but you trekked out here today on a mission: a sturdy mushroom knife is folded and tucked away in your trouser pocket, an airy mesh bag is clutched in your hand, and a pocket guidebook on Midwestern mushrooms is securely stowed away in the knapsack slung over your shoulder.
Admittedly, you will be pleased with any fungus you find, even one of the not-so-remarkable little brown mushrooms whose identities often evade you. However, you are keeping your eye out for a very specific mushroom today, at once strange and beautiful and relatively uncommon; not so rare that it would be impossible to catch a glimpse of it in a neighbor’s garden, or in the less-kempt section of a local park, but still a notable find, and one that you that has eluded you so far: Volvariella bombycina.
As you make your way down a well-treaded path, many of the trees surrounding you appear to be thriving, trunks study and leaves broad and green. However, you notice that some otherwise healthy trees bear dead sections - wounds, knotholes, clefts - and still others have decayed altogether, having become rotting slabs of wood on the ground. The latter two conditions are the ones that you take the most interest in examining, as V. bombycina is saprobic (with an alleged affinity for hardwoods).
Luck is on your side today; you do not have to search for long. If you had been in these woods a day or two earlier, you may have spotted an odd, egg-shaped object appearing to stick out of a fallen tree, which you would have identified as a mottled universal veil encompassing an immature V. bombycina, not unlike the ones encasing young Amanitas or multiple species of stinkhorn, though this one is growing from wood.
But because you are in the woods today, you see a mushroom grown in all its glory, with the base of its stipe now encircled by the remnants of the universal veil that encapsulated it in its infancy. Now termed a volva (from the Latin word for wrapper or covering, and the namesake of the genus name Volvariella), it is an obvious, easily observable, and telltale feature of this mushroom. The stipe itself is firm and ringless, supporting a cap with a sheen of what looks like fine hairs coating its entirety, and lending this mushroom its species name: bombycina, traced back to the Latin word bombyc or bombyx, for “silky”. You recall that there exists a unique variation of this mushroom, Volvariella bombycina var. flaviceps (from the Latin word flavus, meaning yellow), which dons a bright, yellow-tinted cap throughout its life, but the mushroom you see here is strikingly white.
You crouch beside it, peering beneath its soft-seeming cap to catch a glimpse of light pink gills, crowded and completely free from the stipe. It strikes you that had another mushroom hunter sent you a photo of only the hymenium and gill attachment of this specimen, you may have mistaken it for a common Pluteus species. But the presence of the volva and silkiness of the cap are surefire giveaways that you are looking at V. bombycina. The gills start out as white as the cap, but have currently pinkened and will darken with maturity, taking on an almost rosy-reddish hue, and the white cap will eventually wrinkle and brown or yellow as the mushroom ages. But this mushroom won’t get the chance to wither, because you are going to pick it today.
You were hoping to find a couple V. bombycina growing in unison – they sometimes emerge in groups of two, three, or even four – but although this one is growing solitarily and doesn’t exactly constitute a full meal, you’re excited that you get to sample its taste. You cut it at the base, the remaining volva appearing strange and out-of-place with nothing for it to sheath. You instinctively hold the cap up to your nose, a habit you’ve formed since you learned that smell can be a powerful identification clue for fungi. Although you are already certain of the mushroom you have found, you are curious if it will smell faintly of radishes, as you have heard reported by some. However, to you, its scent is not particularly distinct, similar to that of button mushrooms at the grocery store.
A part of you wants to discard the entire stipe and place the cap gills-down on dark surface to marvel at the salmon-pink spore print it leaves behind; the other part of you insists that you take it home as soon as possible to sauté with butter and garlic. But first: there are many more fungi to find. You consider today’s foray a success – after all, you have found what you came into the woods so enthusiastically searching for – but the day is still young, the near future looks promising, and you set out with your fascinating and freshly-picked V. bombycina gently placed in your mesh bag, wondering what else you might stumble upon in the woods today.
Footnotes & Further Facts
1. In both its immature and mature stages, V. bombycina can be confused with some beautiful but deadly Amanita species; do not attempt to consume if you are not 100% certain of a mushroom’s identification! Make sure that you spot both a volva and silky cap, and take a spore print to be doubly safe!
2. The reason I did not discuss the taste of V. bombycina is because upon doing some research, it appeared like there was no consensus on how it tasted, and I didn’t want to perpetuate any misinformation! A friend of mine told me they tasted similar to the “paddy straw” mushrooms (V. volvacea) that you might find at Asian markets; these apparently taste earthy, musty, or nutty. One person who generously responded to my Facebook inquiry let me know that it had notes of anise and almond. Its Wikipedia article vaguely reported that it had a “modest, pleasant” flavor. In this Youtube video, a forager appeared to beer-batter and fry it, and reported back that it was tasty and tender with a cheesy texture (although I think that may have been the result of the breading and spices). One Redditor let me know that they had tasted it only to have an allergic reaction (they’re safe, don’t worry). I suppose its flavor will remain a mystery for now.
3. One study I read found that not only is V. bombycina an excellent food source that is high in protein, but it also possesses antibacterial properties.
4. V. bombycina has been found growing in various counties across Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America; in Hungary, it is a legally protected species, and picking one results in a fine.
5. V. bombycina just so happens to be my favorite mushroom and I am so glad I got to write my first Featured Fungus post about it!
