Meadow mushroom is an edible agaric mushroom. Its body is quite small, weighing about a gram. The diameter of its cap, depending on the age of the mushroom, is from two to eight centimeters. Its surface is smooth. As it grows, the shape of the cap changes from hemispherical to flat and prostrate, in the center of it there is a blunt tubercle. When dried, the mushrooms become cup-shaped. The edges of the cap are very uneven and transparent in places.
When it rains, honey fungus becomes sticky. It acquires a yellowish-brown or reddish color with a fairly perceptible zoning. If the weather is clear, the color of the fungus changes to a whitish-cream color. Closer to the center of the cap there is a noticeable darkening. The meadow honey agaric has rare plates, their width is about five centimeters. At first they are grown. But as they mature, they become even looser, intermediate plates appear. In wet weather, meadow mushrooms change the color of the plates to ocher, while indry they are whitish-cream. Spores are white or beige, egg-shaped or elliptical. They have a fairly smooth surface. The height of the stem varies from two to ten centimeters and about half a centimeter in thickness. It thickens towards the base, may be slightly sinuous. The stem of the mushroom is dense, solid.
Old meadow honey agaric has a fairly tough and fibrous leg. Its flesh is whitish or pale yellowish in color with a fine texture. The old mushroom has a light, slightly sweet aftertaste, a peculiar smell, similar to the smell of cloves or very bitter almonds.
Honey mushrooms are saprophytic mushrooms. Grow on ordinary soil in rows, circles or arcs. You can collect them from the end of May to October. Honey agaric prefers open grassy areas such as kitchen gardens, orchards, meadows, roadsides, edges, ditches and ravines.
From the Urals to Kaliningrad, in the North Caucasus, as well as in the Primorsky and Altai Territories, you can collect meadow mushrooms. Photos with them can be seen in large quantities in any person who is fond of "quiet hunting". If dried mushrooms are moistened with water, they can restore the ability to reproduce spores.
Another representative of mushrooms is very similar to meadow mushrooms - forest-loving collibia. It is conditionally edible. Collibia is distributed mainly in deciduous, mixed and coniferous forests. Its main differences from the meadow agaric are a hollow leg, a rather unpleasant smell and pale plates. However, there is a more dangerous similarity with a poisonous mushroom -whitish talker. There is a very strong resemblance between them, and not only external. They can even grow in the same way as meadow agaric, forming circles.
The differences are in the creamy hat without a tubercle, the smell of the pulp and the mealy look. Meadow mushroom is suitable for processing. Most often, hats are used for food, because the legs are quite tough.
Meadow mushrooms are very useful. They contain insanity acid, which helps the body fight many pathogenic bacteria, such as Staphylococcus aureus.
