Wood Woolly-foot

This saprobic mushroom grows generally in smaller or larger clumps on leaves or needles in deciduous or coniferous woods and may be found from May to December. It is common throughout Europe, and has also been reported from a few sites in America and Japan.

This fungus is generally regarded as inedible, mainly because of its peppery or acrid taste, and has little human impact. However, according to one Spanish web site it may be dried, ground up, and used as a condiment. One 1948 paper states that this species generates hydrogen cyanide (HCN) in detectable amounts, suggesting that it is poisonous. However the same paper lists other mushrooms normally considered edible, such as Infundibulicybe geotropa, as having the same characteristic, so it is difficult to know how much significance to attribute to this observation.