Identification difficulty: Beginner
Meet the old MEN of the woods, "Strobilomyces strobilaceus" (though most books will use the term Strobilomyces floccopus) and Strobilomyces confusus.
Old MEN, you ask? Yes, in the Americas the common name "old man of the woods" is often used interchangably for two different species of Strobilomyces that look rather similar. And there is still a different "old man of the woods" in Europe and Asia.
Confused yet? The naming gets worse.
The Latin name Strobilomyces strobilaceus applies only the European species. DNA studies have shown that the American mushrooms--previously believed to be identical--are genetically different, but a Latin name hasn't been chosen yet.
From a foraging and edibility standpoint, none of this matters. All species share the same identification features, but if you're curious about species naming, check out the taxonomic confusion section at the end of this post.
Old man of the woods identification
- A cap and stalk mushroom
- Pores under the cap instead of gills.
- Mushroom cap is light gray with dark gray to black textural elements. Textures can resemble large gray/black "flaps" that hang down (S. strobilaceus), or small gray/black pyramids that stick up (S. confusus).
- Pore surface is pale gray to charcoal gray to black.
- Pores aren't round, instead they are angular polygons, often elongated.
- Stem is also dark gray or black and textural, with dark scales along most of the length.
- Entire mushroom bruises pink or red when bruised or cut. This color slowly fades to gray or black.
- Found in the woods, growing terrestrially (on the ground) or on logs so well-decayed they are basically soil.
That's really all there is to know about identification, this really is an easy group of mushrooms to ID.
Potential look-a-likes
The pineapple bolete (edibility unknown)
Realistically, you are unlikely to confuse the old man of the woods with any other mushroom, nevertheless, I think it's worth mentioning the similarities and differences of the pineapple bolete: Boletellus ananas.
B. ananas looks somewhat like the old man's albino brother, though they are really more like cousins than siblings, with the pineapple bolete being in the genus Boletellus and the old man being in Strobilomyces. They are both in the family Boletaceae.
The pineapple bolete isn't widespread in America, being mostly limited to the deep south and gulf-coast region. It has white or off-white flappy scales rather than gray, brown or black. As this mushroom matures, the cap between the scales will go from white to pale pink to bubblegum to eventually pinkish red.
The pore surface is yellow, rather than gray, and the mushroom bruises blue, rather than red.
I don't know edibility of B. ananas for sure, most books describe it as inedible or poisonous, yet other reports say it's eaten in Mexico.
Eating old man of the woods
Are you looking for an edible wild mushroom that's easy-to-identify, widespread AND tastes delicious?
Well, as Meatloaf once said, two outa three ain't bad.
The old man/men of the woods are definitely easy to ID, and they are very widespread (though rarely found in abundance), but they are most certainly not delicious.
The stems of these mushrooms are too firm and should be discarded. The cap surface, which can and should be peeled off like a skin, is cottony and unpleasant. The pores are likewise cottony and unpleasant, but if you scrape those off there really isn't much of anything left.
Dehydrating and reconstituting these mushrooms improves the texture quite a bit, but unfortunately old men mushrooms just don't taste good.
I would describe the flavor as tinny or metalic, with a mild salty bitterness that reminds me of the paste they gave us in kindergarten.
Don't look at me like that, we all tried it.
At best, old men mushrooms can be used in small amounts to flesh out recipes that call for large numbers of mushrooms, like soups, stews, sauces, gravies, etc. When mixed in with a lot of other flavors of fungi, they can add an interesting note of complexity. But don't overdo it.
Taxonomic confusion
Old man of the woods mushrooms are members of the smallish genus Strobilomyces, within the family Boletaceae. On that pretty much everyone can agree, but not on much else.
Back in "ye olden times", aka before the mid 1990s and DNA sequencing, mushroom species where determined by observable data: color, size, shape, sporeprint, spore shape (under a microscope), etc.
At this time it was believed that "old man of the woods" was actually three species of Strobilomyces: S. floccopus, S. strobilaceus, and S. confusus. These "species" were based on looks, and were believed to be the same in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Recent DNA studies have shown that all European and Asian "species" are actually genetically the same (regardless of what they look like) but that the American species are different from the old-world ones. The "rule" of taxonomy is that the oldest name takes precedence, so now the name Strobilomyces strobilaceus applies to all European and Asian "old man of the woods" mushrooms.
When it comes to American old men mushrooms, they are tentatively also S. strobilaceus, until the following can be determined: how many American old men are there, actually; which of the Latin names was used to describe each of the American species and which was used first.
Special credit to my loving husband for some of these pictures. To quote him directly, "You better credit your loving husband for some of those pictures."
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