Hi there, I have these big beautiful white mushrooms that come up every year on our forested land. They are under a pine tree and a fir tree, mostly in groups or pairs, from the ground, thick stems with a bulb bottom, thick white gills that layer turn light brown, the caps later get a little brown and scaly. They smell like mushrooms but a little fragrant, though my sniffer isn't great :) Thanks in advance for any help. Jnsk Another photo View of caps after turning a bit brown
Hi Jnsk, I've delayed replying as I'm stuck on too many possibilities. Thank you for the observation details you have supplied, but I think I'd have to look this over specimen in hand, and have a spore print, to make an ID. For example; - These could be Agaricus possibly, noting the appearance in photo #3 and the suggestion they might be yellow staining, and the note on gill colour change. Agaricus gills often start pinkish/white and stain to a dark brown (dark brown spores). They sometimes smell mushroomy, or like almonds or like bandaids. - If however this turned out to have white spores and notched gills, I'd be thinking about several Tricholoma species. Also suggested by habitat and photo #3. Odour can be helpful with these. - The bulb at the base could put it in a number of general but also makes me wonder if it has a volva (cup) holding the base of the stem. It does not seem to have a ring around the stem... The specimen in photo #1 with the curved stem: Was it curved like that when attached, or did it curve hours after being removed? Contemplating Lepiotas and Amanitas: Again spore colour information would be helpful here. Have you taken a spore print before? If you get an opportunity with a future specimen, take a look when there are overlapping caps to see if one cap has dropped spores onto the cap below. Or, remove a cap from the stem, place it gills (hymenium) side down on a white piece of paper, put a drop of water on top of it, leave it be a few hours or overnight. hope that helps, :-) frog
Hi Frog, I really appreciate your reply! Thank you! These particular mushrooms have dried up and came up again and the second batch are quite far along with dark brown gills now. Can I still do a spore print with the mushrooms this far along? I will start one right away anyways to see what happens. To answer your question, yes the mushroom stem was curved like that when picked. There are often two joined together as well. They are very cute mushrooms when buttons which made me curious about their identity. Their characteristics lean towards the destroying angel possibly? I hope not. On our land we have a LOT of mushrooms and I have just began to try to identify a few. I have other white agaricus looking mushrooms with either light beige gills or light pink gills. One is most likely the horse mushroom with it having the cogwheel pattern and smelling of anise. Thanks again for your reply and I will get the spore print going and let you know :)
Good - so then Agaricus makes sense. I'm hoping some Agaricus folks will write into this forum, with some good shortcut questions to ID this critter, but if not, we could start narrowing it down a bit. - It appears to be yellow staining, but it would be good to know if it stains when bruised, cut, immediately or gradually, and if it stains only in particular parts of the mushroom, or if any other staining colours appear. - The bulb at the base of the stem looks tapering to a bulb rather than an abrupt shelving bulb? - Some cap details needed: Either a close up photos, or knowing whether the brown patterns on the top are fibrills or more scale like. - Smell would really help: mushroom, bandaids, almonds, licorice or ..? That's all I can think of right now :-) cheers! frog