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2 types Big Fall Mushrooms with gills


shroomersue

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I have an idea that the first three photos show a hypszigus type me thinks, mature and younguns, growing from fallen tree trunk possibly manitoba maple. The mature ones are very large specimens! The spore print was white. Now the other photos show a ground dweller, white caps, also growing to immense sizes found sprouting gregariously under deciduous mix, beech, maple and oak. The spore print was a pinkish hue. Any help on these much appreciated!

 

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ok ..the pics seemed to rearrange themselves after i posted!  The first two are the ground dwellers, followed by spore print. And the last 2 are also the ground dwellers.

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Are there two different spore print colors? Looks like white and pinkish. 

The ones on wood --I assume they produced a white print-- look like Hypsizygus ulmarius. 

If the terrestrial mushrooms have a pinkish spore print, then maybe Clitocybe subconnexa. http://www.mushroomexpert.com/clitocybe_subconnexa.html

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Yes, the top 2 pinkish spore prints was the terrestrial fungus, and bottom ones is h. ulmarius as i thought. Thank you for the input Dave! I will look up the clitocybe.

14 minutes ago, shroomersue said:

Yes, the top 2 pinkish spore prints was the terrestrial fungus, and bottom ones is h. ulmarius as i thought. Thank you for the input Dave! I will look up the clitocybe.

These were way bigger than 9 cm caps, (double that at least 16 cm mature) on the clitocybes, as stated in mushroom expert ...thats what threw me off. Agreed !

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Sue, your terrestrial finds look a lot like l. irina. I find these in large numbers, in various habitats, this time of year. My spore prints tend to show a little more yellow aka a "peachy" overtone. What kind of odour do you detect? Both l. irina and l. nuda I've found to have a pleasant fruity aroma.

 I spent considerable time trying to nail l. irina and won't say that's what you have. The robust stalks, gill structure and time of year (southern ontario) lead me in this way though.

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Like rob says, Lepista irina (aka Clitocybe irina) is a tricky mushroom to learn. Actually, along my way to learning this species --which still kinda confounds me when I find it-- I once misidentified C. subconnexa as L. irina. (Mycologist Ray Fatto IDed the collection for me at the New Jersey Fungus Festival.) I had cooked/eaten some, and lucky for me, C. subconnexa is apparently not a dangerous species. As I recall, the flavor was not very good, with a metallic aftertaste. Each species has pale pinkish spore print. 

Pleasant Blewit-like odor is a good sign for a L. irina ID. Edible qualities of this species are very similar to L. nuda. Proceed with caution. There are a few troublesome large whitish Clitocybes. 

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I have found that the giveaway feature of C. subconnexa is its name which roughly means connected below ground. The ones I have been able to identify with any certainty have fruited in clusters actually joined at the base underground so that if you carefully dig up a cluster you can pick up for example any one of the half dozen stems and the rest of the cluster remains very firmly attached and comes along with the one you picked up. If that sort of cluster effect isnt present Im reluctant to call them subconnexa. The ones I have found have been big sturdy heavy solid mushrooms with caps in the order of 5-6 inches.

I have been through the L. irina identification irony. At one point I had a barnyard full of big white mushrooms and I believed I had irina. Since irina was supposed to be a tasty edible I thought I would fry up a couple for a tiny taste test. When cooked I popped a piece the size of a pea into my mouth. It tasted so foul that I ejected it after about 1 second. What I had was definitely not something you could eat but I was curious about what  it was. Turned out that next day there was an organized foray of the Toronto mushroom club so I picked a 6 quart basket and drove them down to the foray to see if the experts could help. Most of the foray wouldnt offer an opinion but a half dozen respected members seemed certain I had irina in spite of my protests that there was no way this mushroom could be eaten. One of the members took the basket home to eat and sadly I have never run into her again to find out if she was able to eat them. I am certain these were not irina. The next weekend a local noted naturalist was leading a mushroom walk so I brought a bunch to the walk to get his opinion. Yep these are L. irina. grrrr no they arent. About a year later I was corresponding with a friend in the Toronto mushroom club who had been through the irina puzzle on his own. He told me that he once spoke with a professional mycologist in USA about this mushroom and the pro told him that irina is one of the toughest mushrooms to identify with any certainty - even with a microscope. He offered the suggestion that if you stayed at them for enough years you start to be able to recognize them because they look like irina even though objectively if you try to key out the mushroom you will be stumped. As a result of that I gave up on them and now when I find big meaty white mushrooms I generally kick a few for sport and ignore the patch because I flat out cant be certain.

Having said that, I can happily believe that other folks have no trouble at all identifying them, Im just not one of those folks.

I will try to add a couple of photos. One is a clump of subconnexa that I dug up in which you can see how they are joined in a clump just below the surface. The other is a photo of one of the irina look alikes that totally stumped me.

 

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Sue,

When you get to the point where you are sure you have a hypsizigus  smell them. A hypsizigus will have that anise sort of aroma that is common to the oyster family although it wont be a strong aroma. Hypsizigus do grow on box elder (aka Manitoba maple) and they are commonly called elm oyster. Perversely I have never found one on either a box elder or on an elm. The ones I find have all been on common red maple  and usually in a spot where the drainage is poor (Acer rubrum). Usually I see them on standing trees where they have a tendency to fruit in a line one above the next. I like eating these mushrooms although they can be a bit chewy so I usually slice them fairly thinly.

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On 11/3/2016 at 0:42 AM, Dave W said:

Like rob says, Lepista irina (aka Clitocybe irina) is a tricky mushroom to learn. Actually, along my way to learning this species --which still kinda confounds me when I find it-- I once misidentified C. subconnexa as L. irina. (Mycologist Ray Fatto IDed the collection for me at the New Jersey Fungus Festival.) I had cooked/eaten some, and lucky for me, C. subconnexa is apparently not a dangerous species. As I recall, the flavor was not very good, with a metallic aftertaste. Each species has pale pinkish spore print. 

Pleasant Blewit-like odor is a good sign for a L. irina ID. Edible qualities of this species are very similar to L. nuda. Proceed with caution. There are a few troublesome large whitish Clitocybes. 

I feel Dave has brought up a very valid point. Where in he describes a miss identification between irina and a clitocybe species. As I earlier posted; I spent (believe 3 years) working on L. irina. Involving guide books, spore prints, taking my books and spore prints to the neighbor and a ton of help from people like Dave, Calvert, and Rex. Now that I'm confident,  it's  fairly easy to pick a mushroom, smell it, look at the gills and stipe and go yep that's one. Exactly as Duff has stated. The pictures he sent are excellent. To me the first is not irina and the second looks right but I'd have to hold it and smell it. There have been many times when the forest was flush with "irinas" that, after sorting at home, many went to the bin. Wrong stipe, wrong gills, wrong smell or just didn't feel correct.

 Now don't feel scared by my time line. I've never trusted white capped and gilled mushrooms, I'm colour blind, and the resources (people) on this site are excellent.

On 11/3/2016 at 10:13 AM, DufferinShroomer said:

I have found that the giveaway feature of C. subconnexa is its name which roughly means connected below ground. The ones I have been able to identify with any certainty have fruited in clusters actually joined at the base underground so that if you carefully dig up a cluster you can pick up for example any one of the half dozen stems and the rest of the cluster remains very firmly attached and comes along with the one you picked up. If that sort of cluster effect isnt present Im reluctant to call them subconnexa. The ones I have found have been big sturdy heavy solid mushrooms with caps in the order of 5-6 inches.

I have been through the L. irina identification irony. At one point I had a barnyard full of big white mushrooms and I believed I had irina. Since irina was supposed to be a tasty edible I thought I would fry up a couple for a tiny taste test. When cooked I popped a piece the size of a pea into my mouth. It tasted so foul that I ejected it after about 1 second. What I had was definitely not something you could eat but I was curious about what  it was. Turned out that next day there was an organized foray of the Toronto mushroom club so I picked a 6 quart basket and drove them down to the foray to see if the experts could help. Most of the foray wouldnt offer an opinion but a half dozen respected members seemed certain I had irina in spite of my protests that there was no way this mushroom could be eaten. One of the members took the basket home to eat and sadly I have never run into her again to find out if she was able to eat them. I am certain these were not irina. The next weekend a local noted naturalist was leading a mushroom walk so I brought a bunch to the walk to get his opinion. Yep these are L. irina. grrrr no they arent. About a year later I was corresponding with a friend in the Toronto mushroom club who had been through the irina puzzle on his own. He told me that he once spoke with a professional mycologist in USA about this mushroom and the pro told him that irina is one of the toughest mushrooms to identify with any certainty - even with a microscope. He offered the suggestion that if you stayed at them for enough years you start to be able to recognize them because they look like irina even though objectively if you try to key out the mushroom you will be stumped. As a result of that I gave up on them and now when I find big meaty white mushrooms I generally kick a few for sport and ignore the patch because I flat out cant be certain.

Having said that, I can happily believe that other folks have no trouble at all identifying them, Im just not one of those folks.

I will try to add a couple of photos. One is a clump of subconnexa that I dug up in which you can see how they are joined in a clump just below the surface. The other is a photo of one of the irina look alikes that totally stumped me.

 

Clitocybe subconnexa4.JPG

IMG_1213sized.jpg

Sue,

When you get to the point where you are sure you have a hypsizigus  smell them. A hypsizigus will have that anise sort of aroma that is common to the oyster family although it wont be a strong aroma. Hypsizigus do grow on box elder (aka Manitoba maple) and they are commonly called elm oyster. Perversely I have never found one on either a box elder or on an elm. The ones I find have all been on common red maple  and usually in a spot where the drainage is poor (Acer rubrum). Usually I see them on standing trees where they have a tendency to fruit in a line one above the next. I like eating these mushrooms although they can be a bit chewy so I usually slice them fairly thinly.

Funny enough I open my door and there's a pair of hypsizigus. One one a live box elder and one on a dead one. To be in a pot tomorrow. Never seen one on elm.

No I'm wrong Duff's "irina" look alike doesn't have the correct stipe.

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Rob, I did a taste test cook up sampling and I am fine! Total fragrant blewit like flavour, more delicate in my opinion. So, me thinks you have helped me identify a new one for me, L. irina ! PS  also H.Ulmarius tasted good. Before cooking, unfortunately the smell had waned since it was in the fridge in bag.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Great to hear. It's nice to be able to find an abundant large edible this time of year. Glad I could be of assistance. Funny on the ulmarius odour. First time I picked them they smelled like wet cigarette buts! Can't recall really paying attention after that though. I like them in soups and stews due to their texture.

 Due to work and deer season haven't had much time to post. However I did find some C.subconnexa while hunting (Duff's pic was spot on). Looked in my books and it's not listed, so a new one for me. Always considered them a white capped and gilled fungi that wasn't irina.

As well did the edible parasol test for the first time. Last few years my friends paddock (Meaford) has had fruitings of shaggy parasols. Never bothered with them due to either time restraints or the ability to find irina/nuda. This year I picked some prime ones for spore printing. Unfortunately the print wasn't available for fresh liver and uugh store bought mushrooms, however they were delicious with a rice dish using feral apples, parasols, and acorns along with wild duck. Yes acorns, the property has a tree with huge non bitter acorns. Wonderful toasted and added to rice.

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