Elite life

Mushrooms

Tuber

   A truffle is the valuable and highly sought-after, edible fruiting body of a group subterranean ascomycete fungi of the genus Tuber. All truffles are ectomycorrhizal and are therefore found in close association with trees. Strictly speaking, these are the only "true" truffles. However, the term has been applied to several other genera of underground fungi around the world. The ascoma (fruiting body) of truffles is highly prized as a food, their smell has been described as similar to deep-fried sunflower seeds or walnuts, although it has also been described as "a foul aroma.

Mushrooms

Black Summer Truffle (Tuber aestivum)

 
   Habitat buried usually near beech on calcareous soil. Season late summer to autumn. Edible good. Found in Europe.

Description:
   Fruit body 3-14 cm across, globose, covered in pyramidal warts, blackish brown. Flesh whitish becoming marbled grey-brown. Taste nutty, smell sweet. Spores ovoid, reticulate, 20-40 x 15-30 μm.

White Truffle, Alba Truffle (Tuber magnatum)

   It is found in North Italy buried in deciduous woods. Edible excellent. Found in Europe (grows almost exclusively in Italy and northern Croatia, is known as the grand duke of truffles). More rare and expensive than the French black winter or Périgord truffles. The best white truffles, it is generally agreed, come from the Piedmont region of Italy, particularly around the town of Alba. They appear only from mid-October to the end of December. They are hard to find (most truffle hunters use trained dogs to sniff them out from where they lie buried next to tree roots) and cannot be cultivated.
Description:
   Fruit body white or creamish coloured, 3-16 cm across sperical or potato shaped. Very strongly scented. It is distinguished by the one- to four-spored asci 60-120 x 40-100 um and elliptic, reticulate spores 35-50 x 32-42 μm.
 

Mushrooms

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