Cemetery Agaricus and some extras

I’m still two months behind and I’m in big trouble, this has been a fabulous mushroom summer of lots of rain and moderate temperatures, there’s so much coming up in the woods it’s just nuts! We’re not even to the prettiest stuff I’ve already found!

There was a mini-drought that lasted about 2-3 weeks and I was scared, but that was weeks ago and it’s just been rain and nice and rain and nice ever since.

These are from the first week of June--

Agaricus campestris 6-1-2013

Found these in the cemetery behind the barbecue place. There’s often mushrooms in cemeteries. Don't eat cemetery mushrooms, the grounds are probably treated with weed killer and stuff.

What looks like a deep shadow on the cap, above, is a shadow combined with very dark spores that have dropped onto it.



Agaricus campestris ring. It was so delicate the slightest breeze was blowing it around.

One thing I picked up while working out the ID on this one is if you find a mushroom growing on a big weed-free expanse of grass, don’t eat it. Think weed killer.



The gills and cap flesh, and tiny tunnels from larvae eating their way around. Some life, eh? Note the really tiny tunnels on the gill.

This is my summer to be plagued with confusion by mushrooms with tan caps, tan, pink or brown gills and a ring. I think I’m starting to sort them out. There’s a fine bunch of online mushroom people who help me out when I just get dizzy. I bug them as a last resort. If I had about 25 more mushroom books I might not have to bug them at all…



Marasmius sullivantii, which minutes after posting I discovered I had misidentified, because a kind soul who shall remain nameless but is famous in the world of mushroom hunters just sent me a message with the correction.

Here's what I thought it was--

I had done that thing we amateurs do where I found something close, so I forced it to match the description even though there were discrepancies in the text and the images, which I attributed to an idiosyncrasy of this particular mushroom's life. That just never works when it comes to identifying mushrooms!

Also I carefully glossed over the growing region when I was reading the description. Never grows here. All in all, a good thing, reminded me to be clinical when it comes to working out mushroom ID.



Helvella latispora, one of the “elfin saddles.”



Crucibulum laeve with peridioles telegraphing through unopened lids. I don’t see this very often and wonder if it was a factor of things going slightly wrong. Maybe they were trouping along with great vigor but then that mini-drought hit and foiled their plans.

Stay tuned for more pics and not many words! So many mushrooms!

Oh, but there will be many words about that stinkhorn…

September Missouri mushrooms and more, the backlog resumes

If you’re just tuning in, we’re in the middle of a bunch of late posts.

There was a terrible drought and heat wave last summer (2012), I didn't bother hiking at all for nearly 3 months (no precipitation = no mushrooms to speak of), then there was some rain in early fall and some nice fall mushrooms did show up, but I had lost my blogging momentum. Now I’m trying to catch up so I can start posting this year’s spring finds! More pics, less talk!

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Pretty sure the young cream-colored one is Agaricus placomyces. The big wildly-cracked one might be A. placomyces, too, but it's too deteriorated for me to tell. All I know is it's cool.

That’s some ring! The rings on mushroom stems are from a sheet of tissue that used to cover the gills in the developing mushroom (a “partial veil,” they call it). As the cap expands, that sheet of tissue tears away from the edge of the cap, and stays attached to the stem.

I found an area that had a lot of this next stuff--Spongipellis pachyodon. First I found it on this log, and then I found it all over a tree on the other side of the trail.

Here’s how big it was.

Whoa!

This is the non-boring version; apparently it can also be just a toothless crusty patch.

Right across the trail, it was  different again, but the flat teeth, just like on the log version, gave it away. Please hold for teeth.

Pretty great shapes…

At the base of the tree I found very young growths. Here is one eating a leaf.

Just thought I’d toss some color in here, since all the other pics in this post are beige. This was a little mushroom, maybe 2” tall, and I should know what it is as it’s quite common, but I forget. But what about all that fuzz at the base of the stem? That is normal. ***Edit, two years later (10/10/2015): it's Marasmius sullivantii.



I was going for some shots of that reddish stuff which is a favorite slime mold, when this millipede showed up. I didn't realize it was actually a mating pair! They wouldn't stop rolling along on their million legs, and it was quite a dark little corner so I couldn't get a really good shot. But, “Seen millipedes mating: check.”

That bright white ball dead center is a puffball, Lycoperdon pulcherrimum. My shoe for size reference.

An older specimen, spines wearing off.

This seemingly undifferentiated mess on a rock had me stymied for a year. During dry times it was leathery and hardly noticeable. After a good rain, things got weird.

It’s a jelly lichen!

I didn't even know such a thing existed. My knowledge of mosses and lichens is slim to none, so this really didn't compute. Finally I posted it in the right place and some helpful soul piped up and offered some possibilities. It’s either Collema or Leptogium, that much is sure. I started looking both these up trying to
narrow it down and got hopelessly confused, so I quit.



I feel better knowing at least a little something about it.