The truffle collection

While you pick up a truffle (as for other mushrooms), it is necessary to pay special attention not to damage the ecosystem.

Below some simple steps to protect this precious fungus, to respect and preserve its environment:

• Do not excavate or dig up the truffle: given that doing so you would destroy the mycelium, preventing the truffle bed to recover in a short time, if not extinct it.
• Do not alter the environment: because the truffle is delicate and developed thanks to the sum of all the factors that make up the environment, change them could prevent it from developing again.
• Limit the area and dig well: making an excavation as small as possible and without cutting any roots.
• Leave your rotten truffles: they have no use nor edible nor commercial, but they are still full of spores that, dispersed in the soil, may lead to new truffles.
• Return the cleaning of truffles in the forest: as the spores inside, spreading them, they can create new truffle beds.
• Do not collect truffles immature for the same reasons of the rotten ones.
• Check the dogs because if you left free they can dig excessively and take immature truffles, as well as the risk of ingesting poisoned food.
• Always close the hole from which you extracted the truffle: for all the reasons mentioned above.

Ultimately, have fun and relax in the woods, but as always, respect it as if you were your own home.

HERE you can read all the methods to find truffles.

For completeness see below Article 12 of Regional Law 50/1995 and subsequent amendments, relating to the subject matter.

Article 12 – method of truffle research and collection:

1. The collection of truffles must be carried out so as not to cause damage to the truffle bed.
2. Hunting truffle, exercised by anyone, must be carried out with the aid of the dog in this trained, and the excavation, with the special tool (little spade or blade), must be limited to point where the dog has begun to dig.
3. Holes open for the extraction must be immediately filled with the same soil excavation.
4. In any case is prohibited:
   1. The collection of truffles going through processing of the ground.
   2. The collection of immature truffles, however, outside the periods provided for in the schedule.
   3. Research and collection of truffles to the outside of the hours pointed to art. 13.