Mycology

Found over the fall of 2024.

These tiny mushrooms popped up in my seed starter tray. The cap of the biggest one, the one in the center seems to have unraveled into this long white string. Does anyone know why it did that or what kind of mushroom this might be?

A few mushrooms I found when doing the Giro del Monviso in Italy/France last September. I generally am not good at recognising mushrooms, but I was with a friend with whom we discussed some features and made hypothesis of the easier ones. Would appreciate any further tips on identification.

Earthballs are a bit like puffballs except they have a thicker skin and tend to be inedible or poisonous (though some say it's that they just "spoil" so quickly that you almost never find them in a state of supposed edibility).

Earthballs often tricky to tell apart from each other without a microscope or seeing them at multiple stages in their lifecycle but the Leopard Earthball has a few good tells like the brown cracking scales on the surface and the rapid red staining when it's cut in half.

If it's dark enough the tips glow faintly like a candle that's just been snuffed out.

You can see the glow in this blacklight photo I took (sorry if it's hard to see, I didn't turn off color correction on my phone).

The plant it's growing on is a dead piece of a Mountain Ash/Rowan shrub which seems to be bouncing back from whatever killed that branch.

• Location: New South Wales
• Time of year: Spring (very wet)
• Description of growth medium: Soil and bark
• Description of location: Feild
• Surrounding flora: Grass
• Recent weather: Very wet, heavy rain
• Cap characteristics: Orange/Chestnut, older ones are slightly paler. Small vertical stripes, tiny yellow freckles
• Textures: Smooth, a little rubbery
• Spore print characteristics: Younger ones mostly cream, darkening to Brown/Purple on older ones
• Characteristics of the stipe: Long, no ring, pale and thin, flexible
• Characteristics of the gills: Unattached

Working on uploading more images, Lemmy is having issues 😅

Lots of different mushrooms pop up in our yard this time of year. This was the first time we saw one quite like this. It grew to a pretty large size for what we tend to see around here.

My reasoning for this being A. Adonis: To start with it's a pink mycenoid mushroom of which there are three documented species in the PNW.

It can't be Mycena Monticola because it wasn't found at a high enough elevation for that species (they only grow at over 2000 feet hence the name Monticola meaning "mountain dwelling").

The gills are not marginate (having a different color on the edges) which rules out the other pink species Mycena Rosella.

That leaves us with A. Adonis.

They were found in mid-november in the Salish Coast region of Cascadia. They were growing out of woodchips composed of a mixture of western hemlock (majority), and western red cedar.

Side view of one full mature specimen:

A group with a sample of the substrate (the cap appears to be umbonate):

A closeup side view, and internal view of the stem (it appears to be hollow):

Cross section of the gills — they appear to be adnate, or sub-decurrent:

Underside of view of the gills:

Spore print (first on white background (the split is due to two halves), second on a black background):

Examples specimens once dried:

Examples of the colony, and the location/substrate in which it was growing:

My initial thought was that they were Psilocybe cyanescens, but that's pretty much completely been confirmed as incorrect [1][2][3][4][5]. The current running theory is that they are Hypholoma dispersum[2][3]. What do you think they are?

Cross-posts:

• https://sh.itjust.works/post/28348065
• https://sh.itjust.works/post/28348063
• https://sh.itjust.works/post/28348066

I kept a Lion's mane petri dish stored in the fridge for well over a year.

I decided to make an attempt at refreshing it by transferring into fresh petri dishes. After a week I noticed some strong mycelium growth.

After inoculating a grain jar with one of the cultures, I decided to have a look under the microscope to double check, just in case.. And that's when I noticed a morphology that I had never seen before. It looked nothing like Lion's Mane. The full length of the mycelium is covered with these pegs with a sphere at the end.

After some searching, I am almost convinced that this is a Verticillium sp. - a new contaminant for me!

I then checked all of the petri dishes and they are all this same fungus. So, time to get a new fresh culture 😅

Species is something like Subcana. Grey Mycena are hard to differentiate.

I see these on the disc golf course all the time.

These have beautiful reddish brown pores on the bottom

Edit: After a bit of research and asking around, it seems that this is likely Cystolepiota bucknallii

Hi! I came across this strange little thing last week and have been struggling to ID it. I'm hoping that maybe someone here can help.

It was found growing in the soil of a mixed forrest, lots of birch, elder, and larch, 10km or so north of the German alps.

Maybe the photo isn't super clear, but the stem is not hollow. And one very distinct feature is that it stank like gasoline or hot plastic. The smell was strong and lingered on my hands long after handling it.

Thank you!