“There is nothing deadly in our forests. Until summer”

– The first mushrooms in the Moscow region are morels or stripes?

– We have our first mushrooms – these are mostly stripes. Because morel and morel hats are a slightly different story. In our country, they are quite rare, usually in the south of the Moscow region. In the nearest suburbs, lines appear first. First of all, the line is huge.

“Sounds a little dangerous, is it edible?”

Mushrooms are large, tasty and completely safe. It does not even require pre-boiling. But where there are dry and sandy soils, an ordinary streak can come – inedible. This mushroom is potentially poisonous, but we have not seen serious poisoning with it. The further south and west it grows, the more dangerous it is. It’s warmer there, so poison accumulates in these places. But in any case, our two main spring mushrooms are stripes – a giant line and an ordinary line.

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Photo from the archive of Elena Savelyeva

– What if you mix giant and ordinary lines?

– If you do not know how to distinguish them, for safety it is better to boil the mushrooms before cooking, this is what most mushroom pickers do. Boiling is not more than ten minutes, but the cooking time is taken into account from the moment of boiling. After that, the broth should be drained and the mushrooms washed. And then you can do whatever you want with them.

But is it still possible to distinguish them visually from each other?

– If you fill your eyes – yes. Basically, they grow in different places. Ordinary for us, if we talk about the Moscow region, it grows primarily in places where pines and sandy soils are roadsides, quarries. One way or another, ordinary lines are often associated with pine. And the giant dash is a mushroom that grows in birch or birch forests. It also likes to grow right in front of the trunk, next to rotting, fallen birches. And the giant stitch is much lighter – it is light light beige, and the ordinary stitch is reddish brown.

We do not have the usual dry forests in the Moscow region, good dry forests begin somewhere in the south – Serpukhov, Kashira, etc. Here there are dry forests, sandy soils, and ordinary lines often grow in these places.

Just as in the west – Zvenigorod and further in this direction. But globally, a huge line is growing above all in the Moscow region. On Elk Island in Bitsevsky Park the city is already growing in full swing. And in Moscow you will not find an ordinary one, which is rare.

– Are there really dangerous mushrooms among the first spring mushrooms growing in the Moscow region?

– In principle, no. If you first eat ordinary rows without boiling. But this must be very unlucky for you, because in our strip almost no toxins accumulate. I have a friend, Andre Altieri, who is an Italian toxicologist, and we did a study on our lines together at Moscow State University. On the giant line there is absolutely nothing, as expected, on the ordinary line there are traces of toxins, but very insignificant. In fact, ordinary lines are not dangerous either.

– So, in the spring, mushroom pickers in the forests near Moscow have nothing to fear?

– It is not the first, let’s say, the second spring mushrooms that can really harm. But these mushrooms are for lovers of exotic. There are highly developed mushroom pickers who start picking up every little spring thing that grows on pine or spruce cones. All kinds of strobilurus with slender legs and a hat, the size of half a ruble. And here there are quite unpleasant poisonous entolomes that can cause serious poisoning. But this is very exotic… In general, we must start from the fact that, globally, before the first summer wave, which we usually experience in June, there is nothing really dangerous, or even more deadly, in our forests.