Green-spored Lepiota/Fairy Ring*

Young Green-spored Lepiota, veil remnants on cap

The enormous fairy ring, 10-12' across (later I read that that's not really all that big for them)

Chlorophyllum molybdites

Got another alert on the Mushroom Hotline (thank you, JS!) that this fairy ring was back--I had seen it while driving a few weeks earlier, but by the time I got there 2 days later it was mowed down. This time I went the day of the call (and I wore my cape).

Then I marched over to my next-door neighbor's house to show him a huge specimen I'd collected for a spore-print (much bigger even than the one in this photo), and he said he saw me standing in the doorway with it, and thought, "What is that, a LAMP?"  

I was pretty sure what it was, after rooting around in field guides and online, but the spore print confirmed it--green! From an all-white mushroom! To be fair, these were very freshly opened. By the time I got it home, the gills were already starting to darken with maturing spores.

Not lethal, but still poisonous, and WILL make you good and SICK. And if you're in bad shape to begin with (or just little), you could die. So, no Chlorophyllum molybdites for you!

*Many different species will grow in rings. All rings are not Green-spored Lepiotas! And all Green-spored Lepiota don't grow in rings!

Ash Tree Bolete pore surface

Ash Tree Bolete pore surface, originally uploaded by Mycologista. 

Well, this was pretty cool, since the top of this mushroom looked like icky grey liver, or worse.

Lawn liver

A friend (thank you Robbie!) called to alert me to these (I guess my non-stop ranting about mushrooms is having an effect). If the top-most image is showing up as a weird ocher-olive color, that's accurate. Also, every time I look at that first one, it looks out of focus for a second, and then it pops into focus. Wacky! This didn't happen in real life, only in photo. 

Okay. So the Latin name is Gyrodon merulioides, or Boletinellus merulioides, it's edible, or inedible because it tastes lousy (like wood. or dirt), and one person in Illinois says on their website that "This is one of the most flavorful mushrooms we can find around here." I think I'll skip this one. But I still love those pores...

Update July 24: a hard-core, long-term mushroom hunter told me he thinks they taste like rotten potato peels.

Witch's Hat, Bird's Nest and Red Russula

Witch's Hat mushroom, Hygrocybe conica, sweet little thing...that little knob on top is typical.

Bird's Nest fungi (Crucibulum laeve) on old hickory shell. These are really common, yet it feels like the first time every time I see them (because I think they're so cute). The "eggs" are peridioles, or spore-sacs, and a drop of rain will cause them to shoot out of the nest, trailing a little sticky strand, and then it will stick to a leaf or something, and then the peridiole will break open, and spew spores around. At least, that's what I hear; I've never seen it (but, one day, I will). The yellow one in the foreground hasn't opened yet.

Red Russula. That white "bloom" on the ant one is dropped spores from the one above it.