3:00 snapshot #752

Absolutely gorgeous day out there right now, after a solid week of cold rain. The rain has produced a lot of mushrooms, hopefully some will still be around for my Fungi Field Walk at Drumlin Farm tomorrow.

Last minute mushroom

This appears to be a mushroom from the Coprinus lagopus group, which means it's not really a Coprinus (the genus has been fractured--just about the only thing that's still in there is the type species: Shaggy mane) and it's missing the main field marking: a wooly stalk. But darned if I haven't keyed it out in 3 different guides and ended up in the Coprinus lagopus group. The Arora book (Mushrooms demystified) is the most helpful and complete, explaining that the group includes an unknown number of species that look more or less similar. This group is also distinguished by self-digesting extremely rapidly: while the average mushroom produces spores for about 2 weeks, these are gone in a few hours.



I have seen this mushroom emerge from old wet straw bales many times. If I were in charge of naming it, it would be called the self-digesting wet straw mushroom, or maybe the farmer's melting fairy umbrella. In any case, I'm not in charge, but I am pretty sure that in the Northeast we have a mushroom in the Coprinus lagopus group that comes out of soaking wet old straw bales, and it probably already has a real scientific name. It's just that no one really cares enough to give them their own entry in the field guides.