Hi, I have noticed after a recent heavy rainfall, there are a variety of colourful mushrooms in my garden. Can any of you identify the type? Are they poisonous? Should I keep or get rid of them? Thanks very much for your help!
Greetings! Love the colour on these! Well, I'm not familiar with the mushrooms of NZ so I don't have a guess. While there are some fungi with a global distribution, NZ will have many species and genera that we don't have in Canada. However! We can still try to narrow it down: Can you let us know whether these are growing from the soil or from wood (or buried wood) - Is the stem attached to any wood? Photo number three shows enough to indicate that there are gills on the underside of the cap, which does narrow things down a bit. Are there trees close by? Lastly, if you are really keen, it would help to take a spore print to find out the colour of the spores: Take a fresh cap, remove the stem, put it facedown (gill side down) on a white piece of paper, put a drop of water on the top of the cap, and leave there for a couple hours up to overnight, and let us know what colour spores are found on the paper. cheers! frog
Unfortunately these mushrooms are on my neighbours property so I might have to get permission if I was to take a spore print. They have recently planted a variety of shrubs and tussock grasses in the soil and put a layer of bark on top to prevent the grass from growing. I think the mushrooms are growing from soil. However, there might be buried wood underneath. There are only shrubs within 5 metres but a big tree about 6 metres away. Is this helpful? Thanks very much for your help!
