Random & sundry8 October 08 2:45 pm
I’ve got a LOT of these mushrooms growing just in front of my house. (The north side, which gets absolutely no direct (and very little indirect) sunlight.)
So, the question is, "What are they and, more importantly, are they edible?"
I feel fairly confident that it is Clitocybe. But which one?
Perhaps Clitocybe geotropa (edible)? Maybe Clitocybe clavipes (inedible)? Possilby Clitocybe rivulosa (deadly poisonous)?
Hmm…
Edited to add:
Here is a detailed cross-section of an individual mushroom:
This is one of the smaller ones. You can see the size relative to the nickel.
Have any neighbors you don’t particularly like? You could fix them a nice mushroom casserole and wait a day or two to see what happens…
(I wouldn’t eat mushrooms if you paid me, so I’m no help here.)
Comment by elayne — 9 October 08 @ 9:56 am
Hmm. How about the neighbors that complained about the kid’s “castle” in the backyard? Or maybe the neighbor that freaked out when Dyson and I were walking across his unmowed “field”…
Comment by Doug — 9 October 08 @ 3:40 pm
You know that’s sort of how they decide which mushrooms are edible and which are not, by whether the eater gets sick. Sort of. The spot where the edible ones grow is noted, and gatherers come back each year to the site. Something like that. My aunt and uncle used to pick mushrooms on their property in the Ozarks, and they relied on the silver dime in the basket with the mushrooms method. Supposedly the dime will turn black if the things are dangerous. It does not work, and wouldn’t now even if it did at one time because of the reduced level of silver in our coins. Not that it really worked.
There are people who can identify them, but what I’ve noticed in the books is that for every edible one there is at least one that resembles it very much and is very much not edible.
I wonder if there’s a lab where you can send samples.
Comment by jeanne — 15 October 08 @ 1:54 am