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ID help please


mushroomfadguy

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Hi guys,

Could I please get a little help IDing these? I think they are all different specimens of the same species. Growing in Oxfordshire (Southern UK) today, November the 22nd. Growing in a grazed meadow along side Snowy Waxcaps. There were quite a few around so thought it would be worth learning if they were edible. Usually growing as singletons but you find another every several meters across the entire meadow. Smell was quite mild but not unlike a supermarket shiitake. Not really sure where to start so any ideas of family etc that might narrow it down a bit would be very much appreciated.

 

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Quick update.. Found some online tool where you can upload the photos and it came back with some pretty good suggestions as a starting point. I'll probably try that before pestering you guys next time as I don't have a decent key/book yet. The best suggestions were types of "Monk Cap" or Melanoleuca.

I don't think this is it because the stem is the wrong colour but in other areas it's a good fit so guessing that's the family. The dude describes the family as "notoriously hard to identify" and therefore while some are edible they shouldn't be collected for food. I'll probably stick to that advice then given it doesn't appear to crop up in common lists, maybe this area just happened to be a bit of a hotspot for them.

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Hi, no someone recently suggested that spore prints were almost always white and therefore prints were only useful in identifying what a mushroom is not (in special circumstances like parasols where the poisonous one is green) rather than what it is. Maybe he's wrong though or you need to be better at interpreting them. I do have a crappy microscope from the 1980s actually (40x magnification 0.65na) I have been wondering how helpful that might be for narrowing stuff down if there were any simple rules to follow. Obviously I'm a complete novice at all this.

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Fair enough I suppose if it's not white it narrows it down quite a lot. I'll try to get in the habit of bringing one home with me then. Cheers. What do you think about Melanoleuca anyway? Apparently there are some 30+ species in the UK many of which are common. There must be one that lives in meadows, is out at this time of year, and has a brown stem. Must need a good book or something to find it documented. 

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Still a good idea to confirm with spore print. Some species of Entoloma resemble Melanoleuca. Entoloma mushrooms --which include a number of toxic types-- have salmon-pink spore prints. As mentioned, Melanoleuca mushrooms have white spore prints. 

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Goodness yeah it seems there's a lot of stuff it could be, definitely not one for the novice's table then.

I was wondering regarding your other comment on the tricholoma post whether or not you guys are concerned about the fact that as late as the year 2014 people are describing hitherto edibles as potentially poisonous and what confidence we can have that much of the stuff we're eating today won't also be described as poisonous by the year 2100!?

Maybe we should be thinking about safety at a more organic compound level rather than history of known issues given that diet is almost impossible for scientists to "ethically" study well.

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The "Tricholoma" incidents give rise to at least two considerations.

1. Presumably edible mushrooms (with a few notable exceptions) should be well cooked. Some toxins are volatile and need to be "cooked out".

2. In general, mushrooms should not be consumed in large quantities, especially not over consecutive days. 

The Tricholoma controversy is not yet settled; still not well-understood why people in France and Poland became seriously ill  after consuming large quantities of Tricholoma equestre (or at least mushrooms representing one of the taxa grouped together under this name). For a few years I stopped eating T. equestre (aka. T. flavovirens) and T. portentosum (not that I actually find many of these type mushrooms). But, after several years of not ever hearing of any incidents here in NA, I have begun eating these types again... well cooked and in moderation. 

There was an unusual incident about a year or so ago in Spain in which patrons at a high-end restaurant became ill after consuming morels. It is well known that morels need to be well cooked. Raw or undercooked they are known to sicken. 

I don't think fadguy's mushrooms represent any species of Entoloma. But there are Entoloma mushrooms that may easily be mistaken for Melanoleuca, especially when the immature Entoloma gills are still white. So, I think it should be mentioned. 

"Maybe we should be thinking about safety at a more organic compound level..." Actually, several species of Tricholoma have been analyzed in search of any chemical substance that may be a culprit in the European incidents. Last I checked up on this, one study claimed to isolate a toxin from several different (presumed edible) species of Tricholoma. Then, another study came along that disputed the findings of the former. 

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