Heat + Moisture + Mulch

. . . Equals mushrooms!

I took some pictures yesterday. First, here are some simple little shrooms that emerge from our hardwood landscaping mulch every morning, and are pretty much gone once the sun swings around by midday.

I’ve had some difficulty landing on an I.D. for them; they’re dreadfully common, but I gather that their taxonomy has been in flux, as DNA research is showing that not all deliquescing mushrooms with structural similarities are necessarily related (as in, they might not even be in the same family, let alone genus).

Also, I didn’t bother truly inspecting them, doing spore prints, and what-all. I only took these pictures. My Peterson guide makes me think they could be called “umbrella inky cap” (Coprinus plicatilis), though these mushrooms don’t exactly deliquesce (turn into liquid), as I would say they kind of crumble apart. There’s a “troop crumblecap” (Pseudocoprinus disseminatus), whose description also fits, though I think my stalks were longer. My Audubon’s guide calls this latter species the “non-inky coprinus.” Anyway, it looks like the scientific name, in the case of some of these coprinid mushrooms, is actually far less stable (at this point) than the common name(s).

Here are some of the pictures.

Oh, here’s a little cluster growing up beneath a little spider web. (“Err, err, eeerrrr!!”)

Here’s what they look like when you fly over them in an airplane:





Here they are forming:




Here’s one that’s biting the dust.