Althouse: Fungus of the Day.

June 4, 2024

Fungus of the Day.

From our front lawn:

And here's the current state of the previous Fungus of the Day:

22 comments:

MadTownGuy said...: Fairy rings are fascinating.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_ring; 6/4/24, 5:23 PM
Iman said...: Teh fungus amongus!; 6/4/24, 5:27 PM
Quaestor said...: Well passed the eatin' stage now, if you're into eating that stuff.; 6/4/24, 5:32 PM
Kate said...: I see Meade prefers a healthy mix of grasses and clover. I'm not sure what's growing in the upper right hand corner of the photo, though.; 6/4/24, 5:33 PM
Aggie said...: Now this is an interesting story too: Although the word 'symbiosis' was originally coined specifically as a descriptive of a certain life form, it turns out that a graduate student has found that science has been wrong, for 150 years ! How science got it wrong for 150 years

Now I would never lichen this to a simple fungus in a front yard, but it just goes to show you: Sometimes a fun guy can change your ideas on a fungus!; 6/4/24, 5:38 PM
Quaestor said...: The daily fungus may be blewits -- edible but not worth the risk, tastes like boiled nothing with nihil sauce.; 6/4/24, 5:39 PM
Quaestor said...: Blewits are symbiotic with chanterelles. Now there's a daily fungus worth the effort.; 6/4/24, 5:41 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "I'm not sure what's growing in the upper right hand corner of the photo, though."

Violets, isn't it?; 6/4/24, 5:41 PM
MadisonMan said...: Lot of rainfall. Great for fungus.; 6/4/24, 5:49 PM
Original Mike said...: "Violets, isn't it?"

Yes. I'm in a never ending battle with them.; 6/4/24, 5:56 PM
effinayright said...: Violets are a real pain. Their roots are knuckle-sized nodules you need to dig under in order to properly pull out, making sure you also get the underground rhizome offshoots.

(It also helps to stab the plants furiously with your trowel while shouting "Die! Die! Die!!"); 6/4/24, 6:05 PM
Goetz von Berlichingen said...: I have collected blewitts and these don't look like those I find in the Sierra Nevadas. In my experience, blewitts are delicious. On my little ranch they grow 10" caps and are a lovely shade of lilac. That color will remain through sauteing. Blewitts have a frozen orange juice scent.

My wife gets put off by the color.

Couple of notes:
- Not all puffballs are puffballs... there are some deadly, deadly, painfully deadly mushrooms which, at an early growth stage look very much like puffballs. Inform yourself before you pick them.

Here in the Mother Lode we have a giant species of puffball, soccerball+ in size. These make delicious mushroom soups. Thought I found a young one today while mowing the front pasture. It turned out to be an old chew toy for a dog. Soup was not that good, either.

- Color is one of the least reliable identifiers for many fungus species.

MfG,
Goetz von Berlichingen; 6/4/24, 6:37 PM
wildswan said...: New info from the plant world where fungi are not fungible.

And Aggie said... 6/4/24, 5:38 PM had a great video on lichens being a symbiosis of three things, not two as I always thought.

I can add that all the dandelions you have ever seen are most probably clones. There's a few sexual dandelions living in European swamps and in one Colorado meadow. Otherwise they're all clones of a large number of separate stocks brought here by European settler women in colonial days.; 6/4/24, 7:06 PM
Amadeus 48 said...: Next up for fungus of the day: A photo of Meade's Athlete's Foot.; 6/4/24, 7:08 PM
Aggie said...: ....and let's not get started on those toenails... !; 6/4/24, 7:42 PM
Aggie said...: Now a few years ago I was poking around on a corner of my land, and thought I saw the bottom of an old beer can in the forest litter. I bet down to pick it up and was greatly surprised to see that it was, in fact a mushroom ! But a mushroom that was exactly the color of faded bluejeans. Couldn't get over it, I started looking around for Smurfs.

But apparently although fairly rare, it's edible: Lactarius indigo, they calls it. I have a neighbor that's a rare native plants expert, and she'd never seen one before, much less next door.

Lactarius indigo; 6/4/24, 7:48 PM
Hassayamper said...: Ann, there is more mycological knowledge and enthusiasm among your readership than I might have expected. I myself have been collecting them for well over a decade and have been connected with my state mycological society for much of that time.

May I suggest that you try to show the gills and entire stem of at least one of every mushroom fruitings that you find? This will make it easier by far to identify them.

You don’t do any harm to the fungal organism if you uproot one or two. Mushrooms are to the fungus as apples are to the apple tree.; 6/4/24, 9:01 PM
Quaestor said...: "May I suggest that you try to show the gills and entire stem of at least one of every mushroom fruitings that you find? This will make it easier by far to identify them."

Good suggestion. I have another if Fungus of the Day is interesting enough for Althouse to continue. Take a specimen home and place the cap on a blank sheet of standard 8.5x11 printer stock. Give it a day or two for the spores to drop. The color and pattern of the spores are often among the most diagnostic of species characteristics; 6/4/24, 10:29 PM
Goetz von Berlichingen said...: Quaestor is right, although some spores are hard to see on white paper. I've made myself some spore print cards that are 1/2 black and 1/2 white to deal with that problem. I also put a drop of water on the fungus and then invert a bowl over it. It keeps the humidity up, allowing the spores to fall more readily.

Althouse may find the spore prints to be a lovely subjects for her lens work.

MfG,
Goetz von Berlichingen; 6/4/24, 11:57 PM
Quaestor said...: The black/white card is a brilliant solution. How do you acquire the black card stock?; 6/5/24, 4:20 AM
Goetz von Berlichingen said...: I just use my printer. And thanks for the compliment!

I am unaware of identification by the pattern of the spore prints. I am familiar with looking at the shape and size of the spores to determine species. You need a microscope for that.

The Audubon Field Guide of Mushrooms is an excellent resource that I highly recommend. It is available through the Althouse Amazon portal.

BTW, I see lactarius indigo fairly often here. Although classed as edible, I never pick them because I find them to be just too funky looking. And 'edible' doesn't necessarily mean 'delicious'. The fungus I harvest has to be classified as 'choice' for me to bother. With tasty porcini (and similar boletes) mushrooms so common here, there's no pressure to push the envelope. It's wonderful to have quart-jars of dried porcini mushrooms on hand to use as I please. Handmade angel-hair pasta with a porcini/cream sauce is a personal favorite. Since I have so much, I also grind some into a powder to add to soups and sauces.

MfG
Goetz von Berlichingen; 6/5/24, 9:38 AM
amr said...: I'm pretty sure these are a species of Agaricus: related to the common store-bought "Button Mushrooms" and "Portobellos" etc. Their gills often start out pinkish and become darker as the brown spores develop. When waterlogged and mature, they can appear to have purplish margins. Other clues: rings around the stems and brown scales on the caps. (Both of which rule out "Blewits", which are also more evenly purple, which aren't common in lawns, and show up mostly in the fall. Not all Agaricus have scales on the caps, though.)

Here are some comparable examples:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/185198802
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/130814443
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/177271415

While the domestic species are clearly edible, some species induce gastrointestinal distress in most people. Nothing life-threatening (unless one's health is so poor that a bout of vomitting and diarrhea from any source would be life-threatening), but definitely unpleasant.

And these look too old to eat anyways.; 6/5/24, 3:25 PM