MYCOLOGIST Ladislav Hagara says this year’s mushroom season in Slovakia is the worst in 34 years.
In his opinion there are simply too few mushrooms, and also very few species. In some localities, normally abundant chanterelles, for examples, are quite scarce or not growing at all. In the upper Nitra region, Hagara found only one summer porcini or cep (Boletus reticulates), but many livid entolomas (Entoloma sinuatum, known also as livid agaric, livid pinkgill, leaden entoloma, and lead poisoner), which are one of the most poisonous mushrooms.
“Quite recently, people collecting mushrooms made big incursions into the district around Budiš, on the Žiar mountain range. In Slovakia, mushrooms also grew abundantly in the regions of Orava and Kysuce, but less so in the traditional mushroom paradise of Záhorie,” Hagara said.
He attributes the situation to this year’s weather conditions, when after a promising spring, early summer heat waves destroyed the mushrooms. He concluded that this year, the usual species of mushrooms could not be found in their usual localities, but rather in higher altitudes and other regions, which makes them all the more inscrutable and unpredictable.
