Some folks might be appalled by the appearance of mushrooms in their yard. They might think of fungus as a blight upon their perfectly maintained lawn. I’m a little different… I love mushrooms! I have have a collection of mushroom photos from my time out in the woods as an archaeologist. I have a neat little book called Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest. So, without further ado, here are the mushrooms that have popped up in the Clarkin lawn over the last few weeks.
First up, we have numerous kinds of Tiny Fragile Mushrooms. These are very common in urban lawns. I took a stab at identifying the genus of them which you can see when you scroll over each picture. One thing I did not do for more thorough identification was spore prints. I’ll get into that later.
Next up: Fairy Ring Fungus. Also very common, though this particular one is unusual in that it was a complete loner. Typically, as the name suggests, you see these in clusters that form rings.
Here are a couple, currently unidentified, mushrooms. They don’e seem to match any of the photos in my book so I’ll have to do some more digging. Again, no spore prints will make it difficult. I’ll be doing more of those in the future.
AND THE GRAND FINALE! I had a beautiful patch of Green-spored Lepiota pop up near the maple tree out back. I let my toxic friends grow to maturity:
Here’s the best specimen in more detail:
I learned how to make a spore print in my mushroom book, and the Green-spored Lepiota is a perfect specimen for a first-time spore printer. Different varieties of mushrooms have fairly unique spore colors that can be determined by making prints.
As I find more mushrooms I’ll do spore prints to better identify them. Not to mention the prints are beautiful. I’d like to start making them on card-stock and collecting them. I’m excited for more mushrooms to pop up!
Amateur Nesting 