It sometimes seems as if there is no middle ground in the precipitation department. While some areas of the country are still undergoing a drought of severe proportions, with crop failures, a pending rampant fire season, and localized water shortages, other regions (Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, for instance) find residents with flooded homes, rivers 20′ or more over flood stage, and farmers with ruined crops.
Fortunately, we have fared pretty well weather-wise in this part of the Ozarks. You may recall my post lamenting the lack of enough rain to keep the ponds completely full. You may also recall, however, my post regarding this season’s hay crop, which ended with a photograph of the ominous skies that appeared over our hayfields at precisely the time that the grass should have been cut, dried and baled. Since that time, we have not had three successive dry days in a row, which is about the dry period that is needed to process the grass into bales of hay.  The result is that our hayfields have still not been cut. It remains to be seen whether or not the grasses will be sufficiently nutritious and appropriate for baling when the next dry spell occurs, whenever that may be.
On another front, the lack of dryness has caused the lawn around the house to grow much higher than I normally like to keep it. Even when there has been no outright rain, the fog, and the dew that accompanies it, has prevented the lawn from drying enough for me to play lawn-mower man.
Because the weather conditions are just perfectly fine for fungi, the giant, unidentified mushrooms (which you may recall from this post) have returned in force to my perpetually damp lawn.
Again, in case you missed the last post about the mushrooms, here is a picture to help depict a sense of scale of these mushrooms.
When they first emerge, the mushroom cap looks like the one in the photograph above, which takes on a sort of helmet shape.
Soon, however, the mushroom cap breaks free of the ring at its base, and flares out into this convex configuration that you can see in this picture.
After attaining a convex shape for a short period of time, the cap then starts to flatten out, and even begins to curl up around the outer edges, which can be seen in the photograph above.
In my last encounter with these mushrooms, I contemplated making a meal out of them, but Duane, for my own safety,  convinced me not to, even though Ed reassured me that Cholula Sauce goes well with anything! But now I am re-assessing the situation. Maybe I was a little too tentative last time. Perhaps I shouldn’t have chickened out, and just doused the mushrooms with Cholula Sauce and proceeded to eat them.
On the other hand, Â perhaps they would taste better basted with Stubb’s Mopping Sauce and grilled until golden brown.Â
I’ll let you know how they turn out. Or maybe I won’t!
i used to have a book on mushroom identification but never trusted any of the information therein.
I feel your pain! 🙂
Well, you are braver than me. I never eat wild mushrooms even when it’s an easily identified safe one like chantrelles.
I’m catching up on multiple posts of yours.
Neat animal roll call post. I love that pic of Chipper and of course, I love all Lab photos, the hat was just icing on the cake.
That’s quite a guinea flock you have. There must not be a tick left on the ranch.
The ‘shrooms were rampant when we were out at Roundrock on Sunday. I’ll never eat one of them, however.
To all – We have an excellent book on the identification of mushrooms. Even armed with a good book, I don’t have enough confidence in my identification abilities to take the leap of faith necessary to consume wild mushrooms.
Perhaps the mushrooms pictured in this post are edible, perhaps not. For all my posturing, I do not have the nerve to eat the wild mushrooms I have found in our yard.
To anyone reading this post, DO NOT EAT WILD MUSHROOMS unless you are adept at making a positive identification, as the results of a mistake can ruin the rest of your day, if not the rest of your life!
Sad day when you have to post a disclaimer on mushrooms,,,
I’m a chicken when it come to shrooms too. Morels are about the only mushroom I feel confident in identification. They eluded me this year.
Just saw this article and couldn’t help but think of you Hal. You’re going to need a lot more Stubb’s Mopping Sauce….
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070710184905.473qrihk&show_article=1&image=large
oh boy, I hope you didnt go eating those. Looks very much like the Parasol mushroom. Parasol’s easily get to be about that size and grow frequently in lawns. If you place a cap on paper overnight you’d see a green haze from the spores.
Anyways, these guys wont kill you but they will make you sick. Theyre resposible for more poisonings than any other mushroom in North America… Stubbs covered of not!
Hal,
DO NOT EAT THOSE! And to anyone who might happen across this page; this is Chlorophylum molybdites, poisonous.
Please don’t eat those!!! I was as tempted as you by the looks of this mushroom, which resembles the edible Macrolepiota procera (http://www.mushroomexpert.com/macrolepiota_procera.html), but thanks to the http://www.mushroomexpert.com I was able to identify the poisonous Chlorophyllum Molybdites: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/chlorophyllum_molybdites.html.
I hope you did not eat the mushrooms!? These look a lot like a poisonous mushroom called the green spored lepotia. The think dense gills turn an olive green collor and if you leave one on a sheet of paper it will leave a pattern of greenish colored spores. Some mushrooms in the Lepotia class are edible but more are not. Id be very very careful about these. Mushrooms can kill you. I dont think the green spored lepotia has been responsible for very many deaths but it can still make you very very ill. I have been picking and identifing and even eating wild mushrooms for about 18 years now, and so far Im still here…..But thats because I never eat anything I dont know 100% is edible…and even then the cats get the first bite LOL! Take care hope you got this in time
I just read some of the other posts. Green spored lepotia is a more comon name for the the Chlorophylum molybdites I think. That or they are very very similar to eachother. Looks like I wasnt the only one with that thought
I understand your reservations! My college-aged brother decided that the shrooms in our back yard looked just like the ones in the store and decided to eat one. He almost died. Once he started vomiting he couldn’t stop and the doctors in the ER said that there were many mushrooms like the one he ate, some would make you sick, some would kill you and they didn’t know which one he consumed! Thankfully, he lived, but not until he had upchucked some stomach lining and willed his car to our younger sister! Being the loving sis that I am, a couple of weeks after this incident I brought him some sauteed mushrooms from the restaurant where I worked. He didn’t laugh or eat the mushrooms. 🙂 I think it was a pretty harrowing experience for him!