Foraging for Blewits, An Autumn and Winter Mushroom

In fall, when I move my potted citrus trees indoors until spring, I know that it’s time to start hurting blewits. These pretty edible autumn mushrooms pop up in lawns and in woodlands after a serendipitous combination of a cold snap and rain. Blewits feed on fallen tree leaves and evergreen needles (they like wood chips, too), and the mushrooms appear in the same spot annually, often in fairy-like rings, or clustered closely. In the Northeast, they fruit in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Mildly flavored and substantial, their juicy nature makes blewits a succulent substitute for canned mushroom soup (sorry, Campbell’s), in that icon of the Thanksgiving table: the green bean casserole.

Here’s a guide to identifying blewits, and a recipe ready for the season.

Photography by Marie Viljoen.

The name “blewit” generally refers to two* species of mushroom. One is the so-called wood blewit, classified as Lepista nuda and sometimes as Clitocybe nuda (the names are synonyms). The other, the field blewit, Lepista personata (also called Lepista saeva), is associated more with Europe. Despite two common names that seem to decree where your blewits must grow, the so-called wood blewits I find grow in wide lawns (near leaf-dropping trees) that look a lot like fields, to me.

For mushroom-hunting cooks wanting dinner, the precision of names is less important than knowing what a blewit looks like, and being sure that its spore print is white, or very pale. That’s an essential tell, when distinguishing blewits from a potentially toxic lookalike.

* As the science of mycology evolves, more blewit species may be parsed.

Blewits are chameleons. When they are young the color of their cap, stem, and gills can include swoon-worthily deep or ethereally delicate shades of amethyst and lavender. But these vivid colors may fade to pale buff and cream, sometimes pale tan.

Observing that color transformation is key to learning how to identify blewits, a view endorsed by MushroomExpert’s Michael Kuo.

Essential to identifying blewits is the color of their spore print. A blewit’s spore print is white or very pale. Never brown.

To make a spore print at home, slice the mushroom’s stem from the cap. Lay the cap gill-side down on paper (a recycled shopping bag is perfect), foil, or cardboard. Cover the mushroom with an upturned bowl, or a cloth if you have lots, to protect the dust-like spore from drafts. Leave overnight. Unless the mushroom is ancient  and has already shed its spores in the field, in the morning its spores will be beautifully arranged in the shape of the gills.