There are few sights in a garden more depressing than honey-coloured mushrooms clustered at the foot of a favourite tree. Armillaria spreads underground by black bootlace-like rhizomorphs, killing woody plants as it goes, and there is no chemical control. Digging out the stumps and roots is the only real answer.
Identification
Dense clumps at the base of living or dead trees and stumps. Honey to tawny caps, usually with fine dark scales towards the centre. A whitish ring on the stem. Gills white, becoming flushed pinkish-brown with age, running slightly down the stem. White spore print. Peel back the bark of an infected stump and you will find a sheet of white mycelium smelling strongly of mushroom.
Eating it, carefully
Honey fungus is eaten widely in eastern Europe, but it comes with three genuine warnings.
It must be thoroughly cooked. Raw or lightly cooked Armillaria causes serious stomach upset.
A significant minority of people cannot tolerate it even well cooked. Try a very small portion the first time and wait twenty-four hours.
Only the caps are worth having. The stems are tough and stringy.
It also picks up the character of whatever it is growing on, so material from conifer stumps is often bitter, and anything from a yew is best left alone entirely.
The lookalike that matters
Galerina marginata, the Funeral Bell, grows in the same clustered way on the same dead wood at the same time of year, and it contains amatoxins. It is smaller, browner and has a rusty-brown spore print rather than white. Take a spore print from any clustered wood-dwelling mushroom before you consider eating it.