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I have never seen this one before.


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Found this during a warm spell in North Carolina on 4 Jan 2020. Completely bright orange throughout. Largest ones are about 4-5cm out from wood. Growing on log of sweetgum. No stalk. I mainly use the Audubon Society File Guide to North American Mushrooms, 1st edition. I'm pretty sure it is not in that. I am a 60 year old professional mycologist and have never seen this. Any help would be appreciated.

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GJC, you may be right on. I saw this in the book, but rejected it at first because the book said it had a very disagreeable odor and I didn't smell anything but regular mushroom smell. A few hours later I opened up the ice cream bucket in which I had collected a couple pounds of them and, phew.... I got a very strong rotten egg smell.

Most of them will be going back to the woods, but I'll take some to the lab for culturing and possibly genetic analysis. Thanks a lot for helping me with this.

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The odor reported for P. nidulans is not always apparent, especially if the mushrooms have been around for while. And, P. nidulans fruit bodies tend to persist for extended periods. Here some that I found yesterday that had no odor  https://mushroomobserver.org/398756?q=14xgN

Looks like P. nidulans to me. 

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Thanks Dave, very helpful comments. I took these things to the lab and asked my boss, a PH.D natural products chemist, about the smell. He immediately said hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell). We haven't verified that with scientific instrument however. We just wanted to get it out of the lab because it smelled so bad. LOL. Hydrogen sulfide is quite toxic to humans, especially in high amounts. It acts the same as carbon monoxide by binding with oxygen carrying molecules in the blood. In a high enough dose, a person can die with a single lung intake. Don't know if this mushroom can produce quite that much though. At minimum, I would advise people to handle in ventilated areas and to treat their smell like any unknown odor -- cautiously. On the plus side, such a disagreeable odor leaves an indelible mark on one's memory. This is an identification I will not soon forget.

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Very useful info, Blaise. I had not considered that sniffing these malodorous mushrooms could pose a health risk. There are other species that produce similar odors... Tricholoma odorum, Singerocybe adirondackensis come to mind. 

One type mushroom that I do avoid sniffing are the False Morel species of Gyromitra. These mushrooms don't smell bad, but they are known to contain a volatile toxin that may evaporate out of the fresh fruit bodies. 

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