We've had some record breaking rains this month and that combined with the cool temperatures has had mushrooms sprouting up everywhere! Puff balls in the pastures are common and Shaggy Mane's show up both spring and fall in rainy weather.
Some friends of ours mushroom hunt in our woods sometimes and are always thrilled to find morels. I've also found some bright red mushrooms last spring growing on a wooded hillside. They might have been Wine-cap Stropharia, a choice eating mushroom, but they could also have been Emetic Russula, a very poisonous mushroom.
I have the National Audubon Society's "Field Guide to Mushrooms" with full color pictures but I am never sure if the mushroom I find is safe to eat. Remember that Clint Eastwood movie where the little girls feed him a dish with mushrooms in it and then tell him they are poisonous and he dies of heart failure? I simply can't tell one from the other so I just enjoy looking at them, but never eat anything.
I have two new mushrooms growing near the house this fall. One is a white umbrella shaped mushroom that sprouted in the front yard and the other has a smooth white domed cap and likes the manure pile. The umbrella one looks like the picture of the White Waxy Cap which is edible, but it also looks like a couple of the poisonous types as well. The domed cap one looks suspiciously like a Destroying Angel - very poisonous - but it also looks like the edible (with caution) Smooth Lepiota. Bottom line, it is look but don't touch for me. Also, I've notice that the chickens eat grocery store button mushrooms without a thought, but they haven't touched any of the mushrooms growing around the house. I bet you anything those dombed ones are Destroying Angels. What a name! Creeps me out!.
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