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The Miller

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The Miller

Edible

Edible
Autumn

Autumn
Summer

Summer

This is not a mushroom for novice foragers as it looks like the deadly poisonous Clitocybe dealbata or rivulosa and great care should be taken when trying to identify this species.

Mushroom Type
Common Names The Miller (EN), The Sweetbread Mushroom, Cap Melinydd (CY), Bruzdniczek Największy (PL), Kajsza Lisztgomba (HU)
Scientific Name Clitopilus prunulus
Season Start Jun
Season End Nov
Average Mushroom height (CM) 5-8
Average Cap width (CM) 6-9

Mushroom Image

Cap

6-9 cm. White to porcelain white with a fine suede like surface when dry. Starts fairly round but develops very uneven lobed edges and a depressed centre.

Gills

White turning to pink as the pink spores colour them. Strongly decurrent, running down the stem.

Stem

4-7 cm long, 0.5-1.2 cm diameter. White with slight grey hints and not always joined to the middle of the cap and can be quite eccentric.

Flesh

White/grey white.

Habitat

In mixed woodland in clearings especially coniferous woodland, hedgerows and roadsides.

Possible Confusion

Can look very like the Deadly Poisonous Fool’s Funnel (Clitocybe rivulosa) which seems to be merged with the former Ivory Funnel (Clitocybe dealbata) although these generally grow in rings in grassland. The best id for The Miller is the smell, like raw dough in polite company but described more accurately as spermatazoic in some mycology books.

Spore Print

Pink. Ellipsoid.

Taste / Smell

Strong mushroom taste when cooked but smells of raw dough.

Frequency

Common.

Other Facts

In March 2025 the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) added 1000 fungal species to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The IUCN (Global) Conservation Status of The Miller (Clitopilus prunulus) is: LC – Least Concern, with stable population. For more information, see on the following link.

Foraging Pocket Guide
Mushroom Guide
Foraging Basket with shoulder strap

COMMENTS

8 responses to “The Miller”

  1. These look uncannily like st georges too at a glance. Are there any obvious differences in telling these apart?

    1. Eric Biggane avatar
      Eric Biggane

      The St Georges Mushroom has a stouter stem, a lot more flesh above the gills and has a distinct smell of either sawdust, paper or watermelon, depending who you ask and the Miller is smaller, thinner, has decurrent gills and smells of raw dough. The Miller prefers a woodland or hedgerow habitat, the St Georges prefers open grassland although can occasionally be found in grass next to hedgerows or woodland.

  2. St. George’s day is in March, the miller would not be around then

  3. Jenn barber avatar
    Jenn barber

    I recently found a bunch of very large Miller looking mush in and around an old tree stump in a hedgerow. The caps were 30ish cm wide and they smelt very mealy strong. All other descriptions just like the Miller. Any ideas?

    1. Eric Biggane avatar
      Eric Biggane

      They sound like the Giant Funnel but without seeing them, I can’t give you an ID.

  4. Keep finding miller type mushrooms that have a strong mustard taste on the tongue when raw. Any ideas?

    1. Fabio Godinho avatar
      Fabio Godinho

      See the milkcaps, some of the white milkcaps are strongly peppery.

  5. Thank you for the helpful smell notes! On a recent walk I found lots of these white wonky mushrooms with decurrant gills and a tacky cap (after rain) that smells like semen. Until now I hadn’t managed to identify them in the field or afterwards, which was annoying me! My books describe the smell as ‘mealy’, which I’ve read lots of times in the past and never had any idea what that was supposed to mean.

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