What's this yellow mushroom growing in my houseplant or garden

Nothing edible to share today, but I wanted to make a post about a mushroom that gets asked about all the time on Reddit and Instagram.  

The question "What is this yellow mushroom growing in my house plant / planter / garden?" is one I see every day, and today I'm here to answer it.

95% of the time you are looking at Leucocoprinus birnbaumii, sometimes called the yellow parasol mushroom, the painted dapperling, or the flowerpot parasol. Yes, it's so common in flower pots that it actually has that in the common name. The other 5% of the time you might be looking at the closely related Leucocoprinus straminellus, which is generally a paler shade of yellow, or Leucocoprinus flavescensm which generally has a brown area in the center of the cap.

Both L. birnbaumii and straminellus are tropical or subtropical mushrooms, so finding them in nature in the continental US, Canada or northern Mexico is extremely rare, but extremely common in potting and gardening soil. This is most likely due to the common usage of tropical materials, like orchid bark, in purchased soils. These organic materials may be contaminated with L. birnbaumii spores which then grow mushrooms when conditions are warm enough.

For most North Americans this means late spring, summer or early fall, but if you have a greenhouse, the yellow parasol might pop up anytime. 

Bell shaped when young

Yellow parasol mushroom description 

A bright, dainty mushroom that's yellow all over, cap, stalk and gills. L. birnbaumii is bright yellow and L. straminellus is pale or whitish yellow.

The cap shape starts out as a bell or cone or occasionally a marshmallow shape, then expands to an umbrella, and then the classic, nearly flat, parasol shape. When in the umbrella stage, the edges of the cap generally have fine striations (lines) and the cap will have small fibrous or warty raised areas all over, and the middle area will usually be raised -- this is called an umbo. At maturity, the cap will be anywhere from 1.5" to 3.5" in diameter. 

The stems are narrow near the cap and thicker at the base, even somewhat bulbous as they enter the soil. The stems will usually feature a ring, sometimes a double ring. The mushroom should be 2" to 3.5" high at maturity, but might be as tall as 4.5" in rarer cases. 

Is the yellow parasol mushroom poisonous or edible?

Reports are conflicting on whether L. birnbaumii is toxic, but it definitely should NOT be eaten. Many  Leucocoprinus species are severe sickeners, and symptoms can be dangerous. 

Train wrecker or scaly sawgill. Wild edible mushroom identification

Identification difficulty: Novice

Behold Neolentinus lepideus, commonly known as the scaly sawgill or, in a somewhat antiquated use, the train-wrecker mushroom. If you are using older guidebooks (pre 1985) the Latin name will be listed as Lentinus lepideus. 

Though most commonly called the scaly sawgill, I simply love the drama of the name train wrecker, so that's what I'll be using here.

Just look at all that dense, bug-free mushroomy goodness

The train wrecker is edible, though often downplayed, invalidated and ignored. Called tough, woody, fibrous and bland, it's passed over for more popular late spring and early summer delights.

But that's a shame, because the train wrecker is, when SUPER fresh, not at all tough or woody and while it's not one of the most flavorful mushrooms, it's amazingly dense, meaty texture more than makes up for that fact. 

Also, this mushroom is only rarely attacked by insects.

The train wrecker can also grow quite large, providing quite a lot of food. Across North America it's rather uncommon, but can be regionally abundant.  If you are foraging in forests east of the Rockies that identify as "Piney Woods",  (New Jersey Pine Barens, Texas Piney Woods, etc), during the rainy season, there is a strong likelihood of encountering this mushroom, even if you aren't looking for it. 

N. lepideus can also be found in Western Europe, though apparently much less abundantly.

Train wrecker mushroom identification

Growth habits 

• Found exclusively on dead conifer wood or stumps, especially pine, most often east of the Rocky Mountains
• Note: The train-wrecker can also be found on cut logs and boards, both treated and untreated, especially west of the Rocky Mountains. These should not be consumed. The mushroom can pick-up toxins from the treatment and pass them on to you. Only eat mushrooms found growing on natural materials, in areas that seem unpolluted. 
• Grows individually or in clusters of caps from a single stem

Cap and size 

• This is a large mushroom. Caps range in diameter from 3" to 10". 
• Cap is white, beige, yellow or even orange in the middle, and generally lighter means fresher.
• The cap of N. lepideus has dark, chocolate- or amber- brown scales in the center. 

Gills 

• The gills for the train wrecker are often described as serrated, or saw-toothed, but I don't personally like this description, as it implies triangular shapes that are fairly evenly sized and distributed.
• To me, the gill edges are like torn paper, or the edges of very old books; they are jagged, irregular and often feature square shapes or small nicks.
• Gills are moderately spaced, which means there is generally a gill-space in-between two adjacent gills.
• The gills attach to the stalk (which is technically called a stipe), and are often decurrant (they extend down somewhat onto the mushroom stalk).

Stem/Stipe

• The stipe (mushroom stem) for N. lepideus is quite distinctive. 
• Stem features fibrous scales, facing upwards towards the cap (unusual), which peal backwards towards the base of the mushroom.
• Fibrous scales start out as white, but will turn dark brown quickly, especially at the base
• When broken or cut, the stem is like a thick, dense cotton in texture.
• The stem is pretty much the same thickness along the whole length, it doesn't really taper, and is only wider at the base if it joins to other mushrooms. 
• Clusters of caps can share a stem at the base, but the base may be buried in the wood, making stems appear separate.

Beginner foraging: old man of the woods mushroom identification

Identification difficulty: Beginner

Meet the old MEN of the woods, "Strobilomyces strobilaceus" (though most books will use the term Strobilomyces floccopus) and Strobilomyces confusus. 

Old MEN, you ask? Yes, in the Americas the common name "old man of the woods" is often used interchangably for two different species of Strobilomyces that look rather similar. And there is still a different "old man of the woods" in Europe and Asia.

Confused yet? The naming gets worse.

The Latin name Strobilomyces strobilaceus applies only the European species. DNA studies have shown that the American mushrooms--previously believed to be identical--are genetically different, but a Latin name hasn't been chosen yet. 

From a foraging and edibility standpoint, none of this matters. All species share the same identification features, but if you're curious about species naming, check out the taxonomic confusion section at the end of this post. 

Old man of the woods identification

• A cap and stalk mushroom 
• Pores under the cap instead of gills.
• Mushroom cap is light gray with dark gray to black textural elements. Textures can resemble large gray/black "flaps" that hang down (S. strobilaceus), or small gray/black pyramids that stick up (S. confusus). 

• Pore surface is pale gray to charcoal gray to black. 
• Pores aren't round, instead they are angular polygons, often elongated.

• Stem is also dark gray or black and textural, with dark scales along most of the length.
• Entire mushroom bruises pink or red when bruised or cut. This color slowly fades to gray or black. 
• Found in the woods, growing terrestrially (on the ground) or on logs so well-decayed they are basically soil.

That's really all there is to know about identification, this really is an easy group of mushrooms to ID.

How to identify Golden Chanterelles, gourmet edible wild mushrooms

Identification difficulty: Intermediate

Warning: despite the frequency with which these are foraged, I feel that the risks associated have been downplayed. I personally believe there is the potential for confusion with deadly species. That said, I believe you can learn how to rule those out. 

Summer 2021 is turning out to be a nation-wide bumper year for the greater chanterelle family, which includes cinnabar red chanterelles, black trumpets, and, of course, golden chanterelles. 

Facebook foraging and mycology groups, Reddit foraging and mycology boards are all flush with pictures of, well, flushes of mushrooms. There's a lot of books, websites, etc out there that talk about how to identify golden chanterelles, so I wasn't really sure how necessary another post would be, but at the same time I'm seeing a lot of misinformation or incomplete information going around on social media. 

Overview and history

The term chanterelle can be used to describe a group of related genera (that's plural for genus): Cantharellus, Craterellus, Gomphus, and Polyozellus. Craterellus includes the black trumpets and yellow foot mushrooms, Gomphus includes the pig's ear, Polyozellus is a one-species genus that contains the blue chanterelle, and Cantharellus contains several species of golden chanterelles, red or cinnabar chanterelles, the smooth chanterelle and the white chanterelle. The lobster mushroom, Hypomyces lactifluorum, looks similar but it is unrelated and, while also being a choice edible, tastes completely different from chanterelles of any kind. 

For most people, however, when they think of chanterelles, only the golden chanterelle comes to mind. 

Golden chanterelles are a gourmet wild mushroom, one of the "big five" mushrooms that command the highest prices globally. The "big five" include truffles, matsutake, chanterelles, morels, and porcini. These are the five most expensive mushrooms for their CULINARY value; there are some fungi which sell for higher prices due to their use in Eastern medicine. 

We don't know exactly when humanity began it's love affair with the golden chanterelle. Asian, African and European cultures all have long histories of the mushroom, and we can safely assume it was eaten before it was recorded as well. In Europe, chanterelles were reserved for the nobility for many centuries.

Chanterelles are a mycorrhizal species, they grow in symbiosis with trees. This makes them very difficult and expensive to cultivate, as one would need to both own a forest and be willing to wait for decades while the trees and the fungi mature, before the fugal mycelium would grow mushrooms. 

At one point in time, all golden chanterelles were believed to be Cantharellus cibarius, and older books will still refer to them this way. With the advent of DNA testing, we now know that there are many, many kinds of golden chanterelles, some with sub-varieities, and that C. cibarius only grows in Europe. 

Golden Chanterelles as a group

Since "golden chanterelles" are a group, there are many, many color variations. There are species that are all golden or egg-yolk yellow, some that have white areas, such as a white stem, white gills or a white cap, and some that have those same variations except pink instead of white.

For the sake of this article, the term "golden chanterelle" will apply to any species that is 50% or more "egg-yolk yellow"., We won't be trying to identify individual golden chanterelle species, as all are edible, all are choice and they share many identification features. 

NOTE: Some chanterelles have a tan or deep yellow spot at the center of the cap. I would personally avoid these. And you must avoid all potential "chanterelle" species that have a cap or stem that is entirely tan or brown as it may be a potentially deadly look-alike in the genus Paxillus. Also spore print any all-yellow mushroom with decurrent gills where the stem seems thin for the cap size. 

Why I think chanterelles are an intermediate difficulty to ID

Overall, I think most foraging and mushroom hunting books leave out important potential look-a-like species for the chanterelle. They generally talk about false chanterelles, Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca, and jack o' lanterns, Omphalotus species, as the only real danger. Both these mushrooms can make you sick, Omphalotus can make you seriously sick, but neither will kill you. 

I'm more concerned about Paxillus species, which have the potential to be deadly poisonous. Paxillus are not super common and don't STRONGLY resemble chanterelles, at least not in America. However, there are yellow varieties in Australia, which could always make the cross-ocean trek on tree roots. And there are brown-yellow varieties in North America and Europe which we will go into in greater detail.

As I've said on the page where I define these terms, if I feel there is potential for confusion with a deadly species, then I consider it to be an intermediate difficulty identification. 

How to identify cinnabar chanterelles - edible mushrooms

Identification difficulty: Novice

Cinnabar chanterelles / red chanterelles, Cantharellus cinnabarinus and Cantharellus texenesis, are often overlooked members of the Chanterelle family. 

Though smaller and slightly less delectable than their larger, more famous cousins, cinnabar chants are certainly edible, and quite delicious in their own way. 

A fairy ring of cinnabar chanterelles in the Piney Woods of East Texas

Most blogs and even professional foraging books group cinnabar chants with the larger, yellow chanterelles, and treat them as an afterthought. This is problematic, as the cinnabar chanterelle has a wider range of look-a-like species, and if you simply use the information for regular chanterelle look-a-likes, you could find yourself eating a potentially harmful species. 

I'm going to try and prevent that confusion with this post. 

As a side note, I've been wanting to do a post on chanterelle and cinnabar chanterelle identification for some time. Cinnabar chants were one of the mushrooms we found most abundantly in the greater New York area.  However, at the time I couldn't afford a smart phone or quality digital camera to be able to take the kinds of detailed pics I feel are essential for identification of these species. 

And since moving to Texas, where higher salaries and lower cost of living have overall improved our quality of life, I've been unable to find these guys, until a trip to the Piney Woods of East Texas.

Mushroom identification: the pigskin poison puffball or earthball

This rotund little mushroom is Scleroderma citrinum, commonly known as the pigskin poison puffball (from here on referred to as PPP).

Pigskin poison puffballs live near the bases or exposed roots of trees, especially oak, maple and conifers. 

PPPs are a very common mycorrhizal species, usually found at the bases of older trees (though sometimes young trees can have them as well), and often among exposed roots. (Mycorrhizal means they have a symbiotic relationship with plants, in this case trees).

As a child, this was my favorite mushroom. In late September and early October I would run around the neighborhood oaks and give each PPP I found a tentatively gentle squeeze. If it felt ready--less firm and slightly squishy--I would stand up, back off, and run two or three steps to jump on the mushroom as hard as I could, so that it would truly explode in a cloud of spores.

Identifying and foraging wild black trumpet mushrooms. Edible, delicious, and easy to ID

 Identification difficulty: Beginner          

This is probably a mushroom I should have introduced in year one. The common name: black trumpet, actually refers to several closely related species: Craterellus fallax (North America), Craterellus cornucopioides (Europe), Craterellus foetidus (Eastern and Mid Western North America), Craterellus caeruleofuscus (North American Great Lakes region), and possibly more. Some of these names are being re-evaluated in the age of DNA testing, and there may prove to be either more or fewer species than we thought. 

In addition to numerous scientific names, these mushrooms also go by a variety of common names,  including: horn of plenty, trumpet of death / trumpet de la mort (in France), devil's trumpet or devil's horn, and black chanterelle. 

From a culinary and foraging standpoint, all of the above appear nearly identical, taste about the same, and can only be distinguished with location, spore prints, microscopic analysis, or small details present in large collections. From here on we will treat them as one in the same. 

This is one of the best tasting wild edible mushrooms you can find. I prefer black trumpets to their more famous cousins, the chanterelles, and to the king bolete/porcini or morels. I compare their flavor positively to truffles, the most expensive of all fungus. However, if you were to simply cook these as you would any other mushroom, they would taste good, but you would be missing out on the best ways to use their flavor. 

Best of all, black trumpets are incredibly easy to ID, with no poisonous look-a-likes, making them perfect for the beginner mushroom hunter. 

Telluride Mushroom Festival pt.2, Albatrellus ovinus

Hey everyone, welcome back for my second micro-post on what I learned and discovered at the Telluride Mushroom Festival!

This micro-post is about a new mushroom for me: Albatrellus ovinus.

Telluride Mushroom Festival pt1: Fungal foray finds!

For the past 5 days, my husband and I have been at the Telluride Mushroom Festival! It's been an incredible trip, with lectures about mycoremediation (using fungi to clean up the environment and break down trash and contaminates), mushroom hunting forays, a parade, community and more.

I've been trying to get the time to write some huge posts, but there is just way too much I've learned, and the posts were out of control long. Instead I've decided to do some micro-posts on specific topics.

I'm working off my phone, so I apologize for typos and incomplete photo records. I'll clean up these posts when I get home.

So for this first micro-post, I'd like to provide an overview of the fungi our mushroom-hunting teams found at our all-day forays on Thursday and Friday.

Identifying the Most Common Poisonous Mushroom: Chlorophyllum molybdites (the Green-Spored Lepiota)

There is one mushroom which I get shown pictures of, and asked to identify, more than any other. It seems to be the most commonly encountered, or at least most commonly noticed mushroom in any region of the U.S. that I have lived.

Many times the request for information also comes with something along the lines of "it looks like it would be tasty!" And, in fact, this large, pristine, ubiquitous, and frequently abundant mushroom does look like it would be a great meal. . .

But looks are frequently deceiving.

Eating my first Beefsteak Polypore (Fistulina hepatica) & Identification

I am very excited about Sunday's mushroom find: my very first Fistulina hepatica! Commonly called the beefsteak fungus, beefsteak polypore, or the ox tongue polypore.

I know, it's a strange thing to be excited about . . . but this fungus, though it can be found anywhere in the East, is still pretty uncommon to rare--especially in the northeast, where I live. Despite the fact that this was the first time I found this mushroom, I didn't have a second's doubt as to what it was, this is an incredibly distinctive fungus.