The St. George's mushroom (Calocybe gambosa) is a prized spring delicacy of the European countryside, named for its habit of fruiting around St George's Day (23 April) — one of the very few good edible mushrooms to appear in quantity in April and May, months ahead of the autumn crop. A stout, thick-fleshed, creamy-white to buff mushroom with crowded white gills, a rounded cap and a solid stem, it springs up in rings and troops in grazed pasture, downland, hedge-banks and woodland edges. Its unmistakable mark is smell: a strong, fresh, mealy scent of new flour or cucumber that both identifies it and, cooked, gives it a distinctive rich, savoury character valued across Britain, France, Italy and Spain.