After the extremely hot summer, mushroom hunters’ hearts leap for joy! Do you also like looking for mushrooms? Then sit up: places where you can fill up your basket can be found even close to Prague. Or you can stay in the city because mushroom pickers have been lucky there, as well.

Mushroom hunting in the city? Yes!

Passionate mushroom pickers and mycologists know this – you can pick mushrooms in Prague all year long! We can be thankful for so many forested parks and suburban forests such as Hvězda park and Divoká Šárka in Prague 6, Stromovka in Prague 7, Strahov, Kunratický and Michelský forests, Krčský forest, Klánovické forests, and Na Kamýku forest.

When you don’t know what you’ve found

Mushroom hunting in the city is no different from mushroom hunting in the nature. In Prague, you can find eatable boletes, parasols, meadow mushrooms, but also the deadly poisonous death cap (Amanita phalloides), panther cap (Amanita pantherine) or protected truffles. “The Czech Mycological Society has been studying the Prague mycoflora for years and it has registered hundreds of finds of various mushroom species. Mushroom pickers bring both common and interesting mushrooms to the mushroom advisory centre in Karmelitská Street 14,” mycologist Aleš Vít said in an interview for prazskypatriot.cz.

To largest forests with a larger basket

If you have enough time for a mushroom hunting trip, go to the nature of the Central Bohemian Region; many places are easily accessible by bus or train, and you’ll experience the true beauty of Indian summer in quiet woods.

The Brdy hills are one of the favourite locations. According to houby.naturatlas.cz, many occasional mushroom pickers go there, but you can still find there hidden places full of slippery jacks and orange-cap boletes, for example at Suchý vrch. Mushroom hunting near Příbram can be also a success, as has been confirmed by another website visitor who wrote he didn’t have a large basket to pick up all the boletes he had found in a nameless forest just in two hours.

Avoid industrial areas

More places famous for mushroom picking near Prague can be found near Křivoklát and Pilsen or to the south-east, in the villages of Ondřejov and Jevan. The most important factors are usually the right temperature and humidity; when the conditions are ideal, it’s enough to go to any forest and just walk. Experts say though that you should avoid locust and maple forests and avoid locations near industrial factories and main roads.