ASK BILL!

If you have a fungi-related question, or a photo you'd like identified, you can email me and I'll try to respond. Click the scribe icon to the left for the email link.  If you send any photos, please indicate if you are willing to have them posted on this site, and let me know the photographer's name (if other than yourself) for proper credit.

Question from Barbara S:

Good afternoon Bill,
I have these mushrooms growing in my yard next to a rabbit pen and a oak tree. Can you identify them and tell me about them. I've never seen this kind before. I live in Bowling Green, FL which is in Hardee County.
Thanks, Barbara

Four days later:

Response from Bill:

Hi Barbara:
Your water bottle beside the bunch in the first pic tells me that these critters are pretty BIG, And they are just buttons! It would be helpful to see more mature specimens and a pic showing the gills & gill attachment. I think they are Macrocybe titans. They sometimes get as big as foot stools. Speaking of stools, I think maybe they like your rabbit droppings!

Bill

Additional comment from James Kimbrough: "These are beautiful images of Macrocybe titans."

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Question from Wanda H:

Hey Bill
I found this very interesting fungi growing in my garden this morning. I've never seen this one before.
I believe it is a type of basket fungi. Can you tell me more? My location is south Florida near lake O.
Wanda

Response from Bill:

I've never seen this fungus in my area, but I have dozens of pix of it from your area. It's called Clathrus crispus. I've started calling it the "Whiffle Ball Stinkhorn". It's neat that you captured an image of the little fly chowing down on the gleba (spore mass). Stinkhorns love wood chip mulch. Most people want to know how to kill them, but I don't understand why (well, they DO STINK!). I think they are kinda cute! They are not harmful. They are saprophytes that break down organic matter, including wood chips. They have a mutualistic relationship with flies, which help spread the spores to your neighbor's garden. I DO NOT recommend use of fungicides. If you don't like them in your garden you can rake up the mulch to break up the mycelium, and if you see the "egg" forming, you can stomp on it and break the skin. Then the mushroom will not mature...or smell bad.
How big is the one in your yard (inches or centimeters will do)?
Lovely pix Wanda. Thanks for sharing.

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Question from Neil Dollinger:

This very small fungi (less then a cm tall) was found growing from a dead (fallen) South Florida Slash Pine (or maybe South Florida Longleaf Pine), in the month of April this year in eastern Manatee (Florida) county. They were very soft/fluffy/light and released a lot of brown spores when touched.

Bill’s Response:

You are in luck this time, Neil.  I'm not so good with Myxomycetes (slime molds) but this one is pretty common.  It's called  Stemonitis splendens. Check page 853 of the Audubon Guide.  Myxos are no longer considered fungi, but an amoeba-type organism that becomes a plasmodium. Current taxonomy has them in the kingdom Protista (Protozoa), but they are still often studied by mycologists.

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Question 2 from Melinda Copper:

Here's another, it was growing in the sun on wood chips with lots of friends. It doesn't look particularly appetizing, but I'd like to know what it is anyway...

Bill's Response:

Another great drawing Melinda. I think your mushroom is Lentinus crinitus.Take a look at this link:  http://www.cortland.edu/nsf/lentcrin.HTML

There is a similar mushroom (that used to be) called Panus badius.  It's darker, almost black, and usually has a long stem that extends down to burried wood.  I was looking in James Kimbrough's (University of Florida/IFAS) book "Common Florida Mushrooms" and found something called Lentinus velutinus that seems a lot like what I called Panus badius.  I think your mushroom is L. crinitus though. 

Note: Melinda Copper is a professional artist and botanical illustrator. Florida Fungi is pleased to display her detailed fungi renderings.

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Question from Melinda Copper:

I was wondering if you might take a look at my drawing and tell me
what I'm looking at and what to do with it. I remember this one is a
chanterelle, and that it was tasty, but I don't remember how to clean them.... Also, can you dry them? There are a lot around right now. Next time I draw one I'll split it and do the inside too. There are plenty of other mushrooms around here, I have twenty acres of woods and stream in Monticello, but this is the only one I recognize.

Bill's Response:

That's a good drawing Melinda.  I would easily recognize it as a chanterelle.  Most likely it's Cantharellus cybarius but Cantharellus lateritius can be very similar.  Both are edible.

Cleaning them is hard if rain splashes grit up the stem and into the (false) gills.  I wash the dirty ones using a soft brush and sometimes scrape the stems (under running water) with a knife...then chew lightly when I cook and eat them.  I prefer to collect where the forest floor has lots of leaf (and/or pine needle) litter that prevents sand splashing onto the mushrooms.

Chanterelles can be dried using a food dryer or they can be sauteed or parboiled and then frozen.  There have been cases of people getting sick from eating chanterelles that were frozen without cooking.  I have frozen them after sauteing in olive oil and butter and they were fine when I used them later.

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Question from Pat S.:

Hi Bill, I found your site awhile ago and wondered if you could help me identify a bright orange polypore I found on a decaying eugenia limb I must have clipped off a year before. I live the City of North Miami area. Is this edible or poisonous?

Bill's Response:

I'm guessing your polypore is Pycnoporus sanguineus. Unless you have really strong teeth, you will not be able to eat this critter. No references to toxicity, but it's WAY too tough to be eaten. Most descriptions say: Not edible. Arora says of the closely related, but more northern species, P. cinnabarinus: Too tough to be edible, but makes a colorful ornament.

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Question from Andrea:

Do you know what these are? I live on Pine Island, Florida. Are they poisonous?

Bill's response:

Your mushroom is Clathrus columnatus (the Columned Stinkhorn) or something closely related.  It is harmless...certainly less toxic than the pressure-treated lumber I see in the background. They are one of the many stinkhorns that find Florida a friendly environment.  They stink (a lot!), but will not harm you, your children, your pets or your garden.  They love wood-chip mulch, which they decompose, making nutrients available to your plants.

I get lots of queries about stinkhorns, and most people want to know how to get rid of them.  I don't recommend that you use a fungicide.  It will only temporarily kill the mycelium, and the mushrooms will return after a rain washes the fungicide down into your water table. You can break the "eggs" before the mushroom erupts and becomes mature and they will not stink.  Just stomp them or hit them with a trowel or whatever and they will not mature. You can use a shovel to put any mature stinkhorns into your compost pile or bury them or whatever.

Or you can just do like I do and say, "Hey!  There's a Clathrus columnatus!" and show your kids the little gnats that are eating the gleba (the dark spore mass at the apex of the columnular arms). Then you explain how the spores pass through the gnat's gut and get pooped out (unharmed) in your neighbor's garden where they will make many new stinkhorns.

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Question from Mark:

A friend took this attached photo of what we assume is a fungus of sorts. Could you I.D. it for us? I saw a very similar one in Hernando county (Florida) while his, pictured, was in the panhandle.

Thanks for any help.

Bill's response:

See my above explanation to Andrea.  This is also Clathrus columnatus (the Columned Stinkhorn).

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Bill's answer to David:

Hi David: I just finished a response about the same fungus species to Andrea, so I'm forwarding it to you.  I think I need to post that response on my web page since I get sooo many queries about this mushroom.

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Comment from David and Pat:

Bill, love your web page. Try Ripartitella brasiliensis on your mystery mushroom. It should have brownish scales on the cap, but I could not tell from the photo if it had that condition. This species commonly fruits in mulch in large groups. Clark Ovrebo published an article in Mycotaxon several years ago about this species.

Bill's Response:

I'm glad you like the web site. I don't believe the mystery mushroom is Ripartitella brasiliensis. As you say, those have the fibrils on the cap and a little annulus on the stipe. The ones in my photo are glabrous (I have the advantage of being able to look at the original slide). This was one of the earliest pictures I took. I had thought they were Mycena at first, but changed my mind to Collybia as I learned more.

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Question from Aaron L. :

This l ooks like a "Death Angel" to me. Could it be A. virosa?

Bill's Response:

It's an Amanita, but not A. citrina.

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Comment from Pete C.:

The mystery mushroom below looks to me like the "Hated Amanita" according to my National Audubon Society Field Guide to American Mushrooms. I am by no means an expert since my only claim to fame is that I can find morels in Illinois when pointed in the right direction. On this past trip, we found 450 over two 4-hour trips.