Below are Amazon links to my three books on foraging. Hedgerow is published on the 3rd of August this year.

I am at present working on a new River Cottage Handbook - the Edible Hedgerow. This involves a great deal of wandering around the countryside looking for interesting things - not a bad way to spend your time. It is due to be published in September 2010.

It is too easy to dismiss every Paxillus as P. involutus. Alan Hills briefly describes four possibilities.

So let’s begin with P. involutus. We think of it as a Betula (Birch) species, but it is commonly found with Picea and Pinus; it prefers dry sandy and nutrient poor soils.

On the other hand P. validus should be looked for with rich loamy, acid to neutral soils, in parks, gardens and roadside verges such as industrial estates and car parks. On average it is somewhat larger than P. involutus and having a short stumpy tapered stipe, it can be found in large numbers fruiting under Tilia, Carpinus and Populus, with its gills close to or touching the soil, both these two species have almost identical spore colour.

Paxillus obscurosporus on the other hand has a spore print described as reddish brown to chocolate mixed with wine red tinges, it is clearly different from the rust brown of   P. involutus and P. validus. Described as strongly grooved, conspicuously felty when young and at this stage having a very large roll to the rim becoming flat with age, having the largest cap of the four species described here. Described as fruiting with Abies, Tilia and Quercus, but the one in the photograph was with Betula.

Lastly comes Paxillus rubicundulus that we all find at times always under Alnus (Alder), making it now the easiest Paxillus to recognise.

and

Congratulations to Mario Tortelli, in August this year the found the first proven specimen of Boletus depilatus, when foraying in Kent. A somewhat similar species to B. impolitus having a hammered effect to the cap and strangely almost always a bent in the stipe, unlike B. impolitus it is a chalk land species.

Warning: Eating wild fungi can be a wonderful way of enjoying the fruits of nature, but if you get it wrong you may kill yourself. Before you eat anything please read this.