Clouded Agaric?

[Toadflax]

Growing in leaf litter under mixed deciduous woodland. I'm tending towards Clouded Agaric - just running a spore print at the moment. The first picture looked like the size and colour of a chapatti - tried to put my hand in for scale, but perspective hasn't worked properly. This cap was about 20cm across.

Usual disclaimer, I'm not going to eat it, nothing said in this thread is taken as gospel, my responsibility to confirm ID if I was going to eat it, etc.

Also, any thoughts on this one?

Also, any idea what this is? Looks like cauliflower, but is soft and slimy.

Geoff

 

[Dave]

My guess is the first is from the Clitocybe family, but the stem looks too thin for nebularis, [clouded algaric] possibly a dealbata, like rivulosa, in which case, deadly! :tapedshut

Source: Collins nature guides, and some older ID books I have.

 

[dave k]

Bottom one looks like a slime mold.

 

[xylaria]

the very toxic clitocybes are small grass land species. Dealbatas are spotted but they are less than 5cm across which is the lenght of a thumb. 20 cm is the lenght of a mans hand, the fungus in the piccy looks abotu 10cm, but I don't think it is a cloud cap as it is too elagant and the cap on cloud cap has a transluent quality like blewits do. Clouds are nearly always in groups or rings and have very tightly packed gills. Looking at the broken stem are you sure it is not a milk cap. It could be a common funnel cap looking at size but I don't think it is.

Suggestion for the dark one would trichomopsis platyphylla. sometimes it is called collybia or oudemansiella platyphylla

the bottom one is slime mold. The name is not found in normal fungi books.

 

[Toadflax]

the fungus in the piccy looks abotu 10cm,

Thanks.

The large fungus was definitely about 20cm across. I tried to hold my hand to give it some scale, but the perspective hasn't worked properly, so it makes the diameter look smaller than it actually was. As I mentioned in the first posting, the top of it reminded me very much in colour, texture and size of a chapatti!

Whatever it was, it was a very elegant thing to look at, the cap looked very delicate and thin, but when you see the gills underneath you can see that it is quite a robust structure.


Geoff

 

[Dave]

20cm is big. Could the top one a clitocybe candicans? Grows in beech/oak/ more rarely spruce forests. According to my books this is the largest of the clitocybe family.

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:...+clitocybe+candicans&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk

http://www.naturalvisions.co.uk/ImageDetail.aspx?tconid=1&bconid=10&photoID=56375

Did it have a 'wooly' base? It just looks like clitocybe. Although it must be a huge one. [This is why I never eat any mushrooms i find, even the ones im 99% sure I can identify!]

 

[xylaria]

Clitocybe candicans is of the sub-sect candicantes which are all smaller than 5cm and are dependant on grass. When they occur in woods it would still be near grass. They all contain muscarine which is antidotible with atropine. The moderately poisonous clitocybe phyllophila (cerussata) is 10 cm across and is found in BL woods. The caps of this sect are have felty feel like cloud caps, (feel like baby skin), it also has pinky/biege spotting but the gills appear to too decurrent to be this.

Clitocybe maxima is the largest clytocybe. I think it may be a C. geotropa as there is a umbonate in the centre of the specium with the foot next to it. The stem is an atipical shape for a c.geotropa which is causing me some doubt, that it could be leucopaxillus giganteus, or the smaller but spotted clitocybe (lepista) gilva.

Needless to say i haven't really got a clue, and I would not eat it. If I could have a good smell i may be a bit wiser. I think we all agree white clitocybes are very hard to ID is this way.

 

[Toadflax]

Although I have a very good ID book for edible fungi, I think I probably need one for non-edible ones as well - for purposes of elimination. Clouded Agaric was the closest match in my edible book but I suspect that with hunting for edible fungi it is almost as important to know what it is not as much as what it is.

What I'm definitely not going to do it to eat anything unless I'm 100% positive with the ID and that probably means having an expert with me to confirm the ID.



Geoff

 

[xylaria]

Although I have a very good ID book for edible fungi, I think I probably need one for non-edible ones as well - for purposes of elimination. Clouded Agaric was the closest match in my edible book but I suspect that with hunting for edible fungi it is almost as important to know what it is not as much as what it is.

What I'm definitely not going to do it to eat anything unless I'm 100% positive with the ID and that probably means having an expert with me to confirm the ID.



Geoff

I had been collecting for about 10 years before I could ID a cloud cap well enough to eat it. Even well ID'ed I poisoned MrX with cloud caps. He ate a large amount and then went to the pub with my dad and was very ill indeed after. Pale clytocybes are hard work and I think you doing really well, and your head is screwed on.

There is risk in every thing, says the woman who just been hit in the eye because I have tried to dry fry plantian seeds to open them. :borgsmile
[ I added some bittercress and blewit to the pan as well and it tasted very nice]
Thank you for the heads up on the food source, and I write up a full health and safety report on the risks of frying seeds at a later date .

 

[Toadflax]

I've still got half a bowl of plantain seeds left and I was wondering what to do with them! I wonder if you could split them by leaving them damp to sprout, like beansprouts...

May be too late now this year, but I need to try dock seeds, seeing Toddy raves about them.



Geoff

 

[xylaria]

I have seen alot Rumex spp. in seed at the moment never thought to try and eat them. I am not very good at telling them apart, but I don't think that is important if you are eating them. They dead easy to spot at the moment as the seed heads are a lovely rust colour. I have used the dry red shoots as kindling to which it excells.

So I now know what i will been picking up on the way home from school with kids today.

I need to learn my grasses, i know i am missing a big section of wild food by ignoring them. I can Id the various ergots, but not the grass.

 

[Toadflax]

That's been my worry about using grass seeds - ergot, as I don't know anything about it apart from its deadly results.

I thought about rewording that quote about an old soldier: "An old forager is a good forager, that's because s/he is an old forager."

If you're a bad forager, then you don't get old!


Geoff

 

[xylaria]

When you are hand picking grasses ergot infection is quite easy to spot. Most grasses and sedges have quite pale seed heads and are very regular in shape. Ergot turns the seed black and when fruiting it distorts the seed shape. Hand winnowing with wheat the black seeds are easy to spot. Other darker grass seeds might be another matter. Sedges are less effected and but it is common in rye. I can't ID sedge or rye in the wild.

Ergot is really interesting. In the early 1930's a chemist isolated the alkaloids of ergot, and found treatments for migrane, parkinsons, dementia, psycosis, and has removed the fear of death due to blood loss in labour.

It is one of those subjects that I have the academic knowledge but no practical. I my book that means I know next to nothing about it.