Here are some more mushroom finds this week for #fungifriday
Look at my poor dried out reddening lepiotas.
Just last week there were nice and vibrant and hydrated. This would probably be the perfect time to harvest them. I didn't harvest them because they are growing out of fertilized soil and probably contain lots of chemicals.
A cold dry wind came in and dried out these two before they could open their caps. You can see why they are called reddening lepiotas, if you cut the stem they will bleed red and when they dry out they have a reddish brown color compared to when they start out as all white.
Here are some unidentified LBMs (little brown mushrooms) they also seem to have been dried out by the cold wind. They are growing out of some railroad ties, I'm sure they have all sorts of petroleum chemicals in them from the treated railroad tie wood. Mushrooms are really good at absorbing chemicals and heavy metals so if you ever foraging avoid fertilized polluted places as you are likely to get a meal full of toxins.
Here are some split gills on a dead branch. These mushrooms are almost always dried out except for after a rain, but even then they dry out really fast. This makes them an easy mushroom to store for use later. You can harvest them and let them dry and they can be soaked in water again to make them ready for cooking. I'm keeping an eye on this branch to let them grow a bit larger before I harvest them.
Here are the split gills a bit closer. Eventually when they get larger the gills will have a split down the middle of each gill creating a unique pattern. Right now the split gill pattern isn't very noticeable. Their latin name is Schizophyllum commune.
Now for a bunch of ink caps. I suspect these are young pleated ink caps.
Tons of them were growing in a well watered lawn. These are edible as well but its not worth trying to harvest them because they are too small to merit a meal and when you cook them they dissolve into slime. At best you could use them in soup but then they don't really taste like anything. Not worth harvesting but cool to find since they grow in large numbers together.
Here are some more lawn mushrooms.
I thought they might be mower's mushrooms (Panaeolus foenisecii) at first glance but after looking at the gills they remain unidentified. My second guess would be these are mica caps in their late stage of growth another type of ink cap mushroom that is technically edible though not really worth eating.
That's all for now happy #fungifriday