UKH

Saw some huge mushrooms* above 800m on the stoney summit plateau of Grasmoor in the northern Lakes, amazed they are so big considering how windswept it would be, Large and brown, look edible but could be wrong, any ideas on the type, rare i would imagine.

*About the size of a cep

“Looked edible”?  Statistically, most mushrooms won’t kill you, but most will either make you ill or are rubbish to eat or both (ie only a small proportion make  good eating).  

I have no intention of eating or picking them, it is just that i have never seen anything like that at altitude, i'm just interested to know the type as they must be rare.

PS. typical of UKC to go off on a tangent, oh well carry on idiocracy.

Really bad idea to comment on the type of fungus without picture, full description, spore print, flesh colour, smell etc etc......

Don't eat it unless you're 110% certain what it is!

Look up parasol mushrooms maybe? Very hard to give an ID on a rough description though. If they are parasols they’re a pretty safe bet for picking and eating as there’s pretty much nothing you can mistake them for given their size

My boss when I was a postdoc was a mycologist, as he freqently said, all mushrooms are edible, but some only once.

You can't be a mycologist about mushrooms; they're all the same gender

Just a reminder about picking fungi to eat.

Divide what ever you pick into three portions.

The first is for you.

The second is for the doctor.

The third is for the coroner.

Dave

Parasols crossed my mind, being big, flat, tall & plate-sized. Much bigger than boletus edulis, though. And gills, not pores. More creamy upper flesh with brown markings, too.

I found some mushrooms growing on the business park where I work. Skin looked very like boletus, and vaguely similar shape. But then spotted the gills. Turned out to be brown roll rim mushrooms, and quite (nay, deadly) poisonous...

Saying you saw a large brown mushroom is a bit like saying you saw a dark green tree...

Lots of parasols around at the moment. Found these huge ones in Cornwall last week.

The book to get for mushrooms is by Roger Phillips. You can look up all the death caps, all the happy ones and all the edible ones

Ah I didn’t realise theirs had pores, and I’d missed the size comparison with ceps. 

Ah, they didn't; I just got carried away with the cep comparison...

Yep. Loads of massive parasols lacally to me too. In fact, I've seen a lot more fungus fruiting bodies this year than most, which seems counterintuitive when considering how dry its been.

best conditions for lots of mushrooms in early autumn is a hot summer followed by some rain (enough to get the soil wet to a depth of several cm).

Well if nothing else I think between the two of us we’ve amply demonstrated why a mushroom ID based on “large, brown, and vaguely cep-y” is unlikely to be reliable! 

Yeah pretty vague, thought the fact they were above 800m would pin it down more.

Have an id now as a King Bolete, looks like a bun on top with no gills, but there normal habitat is among pine trees.

Not parasols have seen these, have a rough id as a King Bolete, brown  bun like on top with no gills and white flesh. Habitat wise being above 800m is the unusual thing, doesn't fit with liking pines and woods.

All boletes are mycorrhizal (ie they form a symbiotic association with the roots of plants), usually with trees but sometimes with shrubs such as bearberry which can grow a long way above the tree line.

Thanks for the reply interesting.

me too, but not sure you can use size as a comparison as Ceps can grow larger (both cap size - 30cm+ and weight - 3kg!)

a Boletus, but not edulis. probably red or yellow-cracked bolete..

"Gone"...

I've never seen them bigger than the 'penny bun' name they are given in English. Maybe they get picked or eaten before I get to them...

I checked on a French site which is usually reliable, it says 10-20cm diameter for B edulis

http://mycorance.free.fr/valchamp/champi18.htm

Yeah deleted, don't think it really matters what they look like, you guys will just continue spouting hot air.

found a troop of Penny Buns recently and realised why i've never spotted them before- very well camoflaged in the leaf litter and come in all sizes. sliced and dried this one in oven..

https://photos.app.goo.gl/mXXzohrZ4JbpRJCQ9

my collins gem says up to 30cm for B. edulis but wiki says rare specimens exceed this..

a huge specimen collected on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, in 1995 bore a cap of 42 cm (16+1⁄2 in), with a stipe 18 cm (7 in) in height and 14 cm (5+1⁄2 in) wide, and weighed 3.2 kg (7 lb 1 oz)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boletus_edulis

Eh? You asked for help with a vague description. We've been discussing possibilities. Having a picture would help narrow the discussion.

Have seen them up to dinner plate sized but quite often by that point they are maggot ridden.

There is a really good app for smartphone. You take a pic of fungus and it tells you all about it.  Sorry can't think of the app name but a quick search will throw something up I expect.

hmm - have my doubts about any app that can identify at a species level from just a photo, esp with fungi. i've used this before for fungi and bug ids: https://www.ispotnature.org/

Shroomify

This is how the fungus are presented.

This is the menu screen.

One of my favourite apps.

what does the app think this is? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerocomus_subtomentosus#/media/File:Ziegenlip...

this should be easier: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Bol.chrys.jpg/102...

Thinking about the deadly varieties of fungus, and the symbiotic relationship they have with their environment, do they naturally produce the toxins or are they a by-product of the nutrient exchange between them and their neighbours i.e. if they are close to oak, is it the oak which produces the toxic chemicals, which the fungus then collects and releases.

Its the fungi itself, many (probably most)  fungi are not part of a symbiotic association with a plant but still produce a huge variety of chemicals, some of which are toxic to us or other organisms.

seems boletes tolerate/thrive on/bioaccumulate heavy metals which makes me question my big haul of Ceps on an old colliery site..

i briefly saw OP's pic- a small troop of substantial bodies, reddish/brown caps (hints of cracking) starting to flatten out revealing a hint of tubes. the uniform stem looked more yellow than red, which made me think could be the rarer? yellow-cracked bolete aka suede bolete - Xerocomus (formerly Boletus) subtomentosus : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerocomus_subtomentosus (also mentions association with bilberry)

then there's the red cracking/cracked bolete Xerocomellus chrysenteron, formerly known as Boletus chrysenteron or Xerocomus chrysenteron.

or perhaps https://www.first-nature.com/fungi/xerocomellus-cisalpinus.php ?

Like eating big catfish downstream (or upstream) of a DIY gold-mining operation in Peru.

i was thinking more tuna- the king of fish

wiki says "The mushroom {B.edulis)'s resistance to heavy-metal toxicity is conferred by a biochemical called a phytochelatin—an oligopeptide whose production is induced after exposure to metal." so prob not like catfish..?