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Mushroom or toadstool ... nasty or nice?

ShepherdsBarnShepherdsBarn Posts: 401
edited September 2022 in Plants
Does anybody recognise this fungus, please? It looks like a field mushroom to my inexperienced eyes.

Posts

  • KT53KT53 Posts: 9,016
    Never accept guidance as to whether a mushroom is edible from a decision made on the basis of a photograph.  If you don't know it's safe, assume it isn't.  If somebody says it is, and turns out to be wrong, you may not be in any position to sue!
  • ShepherdsBarnShepherdsBarn Posts: 401
    Don't worry ... I have no intention of eating it! I think the slug has beaten me to it, anyway. I was asking only out of curiosity. 😊
  • Busy-LizzieBusy-Lizzie Posts: 24,043
    It looks like a field mushroom to me too. Does it smell like one? If it goes yellow when you scratch it then it isn't an edible one, though not very poisonous.
    Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
  • ShepherdsBarnShepherdsBarn Posts: 401
    I didn't think to smell it and I can't really remember what they smell like. I will check it tomorrow - if the slug hasn't devoured it! Perhaps there will be some more as this is the third one. 
  • steephillsteephill Posts: 2,841
    I would guess field mushroom too and it is likely there will be plenty more to come. You could make a spore print to help with ID - place a cap gills down on a piece of white paper overnight. You should find an image formed by spores which would be chocolate brown in colour if it is field mushroom.
  • ShepherdsBarnShepherdsBarn Posts: 401
    Thank you @steephill ... there is not much left of it this morning so I will hope for some more. There has never been any there before, I'd love to know how it just 'appeared'! 🙂
  • UffUff Posts: 3,199
    It just does SheherdsBarn. Conditions must just have been right for it and you might not see it next year. That's how I'm understanding it anyway. This year I'm seeing  certain types of fungi where I've never seen them before. For example, although I've only lived here 7 years I've never seen ceps in part of the woodland at the back of the house, yesterday I saw 2 that I would loved to have picked last week but was away.
    SW SCOTLAND but born in Derbyshire
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    I remember the early autumn of 1976 as being a fabulous time for fungi ... @WonkyWomble was a small baby having early morning feeds, and afterwards I would pop her in the pram and go for a walk along the lanes and around the village fungi spotting ... I remember the village playingfield in particular as a marvellous source of of edible mushrooms ... a few years previously the whole area had been top-dressed with compost from a local mushroom farm and the spawn obviously thoroughly relished the first rains after the very warm weather we'd had ... the villagers (us included) gathered them by the bucket full for many mornings, cooked them up and filled our freezers! 😋

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





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