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Autumn Colours

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By Helen Lee Gray

As the colder weather returns and the rain falls, the mushrooms appear across the woodland floor leaving sots of colour amongst the fallen leaves.

Our mountain is not one covered in pine and eucalyptus, we're lucky to have native oak trees growing in the valley.  The oak brings the change of the season to life as the leaves turn a wonderful bright yellow and mushrooms start to spring up underneath.

Walks in the hills become a quest to identify the mushrooms.  I can spot them, but not identify them. You need an expert guide like José Pais from Villa Chanca to tell you what is tasty and what will kill you!  José organises walks in the Penela and Castanheira de Pera districts.  His walks end with a tasting menu of the edible mushrooms the group picked and it's well worth doing one of his walks to learn more.

Here are two I know are edible.  The parasol mushroom (below) grows extensively around here in late October.  The walks behind our house across the fields in Pera are full of the mushrooms after the first snap of cold weather.  Be quick though, the locals know when to collect them and will be out at sunrise to get them.  




The cauliflower mushroom (above) is  rarer.  I know of four places it pops up each year...same place every time.  Try driving on the back road from Castanheira de Pera to Pera and you might spot one.  Or try the walk from Sarnadas to Coentral along the 'roman' road through the woods. I've picked a few before and handed them to José Pais who turns these into a sweet sticky paste which is put into filo pastry.

Other mushrooms I can never be sure of, is the boletus (below) the tasty one or the bitter one?  There's lots at Poço Corga river beach.  Here you'll also find lots of saffron milk caps which are edible, but make sure they bleed orange and not white otherwise you're in for a rough night!


If you'd rather let someone else take care of the identification the picking and the walking then a really great autumn getaway is the Convento de Belmont. Not only is it a beautiful hotel set in stunning Serra da Estrela countryside, the chef is a well-know mushroom expert.  Chef Lubave served us a tasting menu of local mushrooms, which includes a mushroom ice cream. The Convento organises a mushroom festival too.

The greatest thing about the mushroom season is to suddenly come upon one of these brightly coloured jewels, where there were just leaves yesterday, today is a fly agaric brighten up the forest floor.  These all add to the colours of autumn in Central Portugal 







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