Urban mushroom diary - autumn update 4

The previous chapters of this diary are here, here and here. This might go on for a long time. I have no idea when the urban mushrooms season ends. I never paid so much attention to fungi.

4 October 2015 - I'm looking so hard that I have mushroom hallucinations. Urban lawns present me with mushroom mirages: fallen leaves and crumpled wads of paper show their hidden mushroom faces. I really thought I saw mushrooms here, until I took a close look.

A beautiful mushroom presents me with a Rumpelstiltskin puzzle: "What's my name?" And I really have no idea! Maybe it is some Russula and I know that you could taste a little piece on your tongue, but I don't dare to do that yet. And the stem looks too thin for a Russula. Could it be Entoloma incanum?

This is again in the no-mans-land between the bicycle path and the road. Are these semi-forgotten places ideal for mushrooms? Or is it just selection bias: that I see most fungi where I drive my bicycle?

This place is full of beautiful mushrooms. The most striking ones are the big, dark-spored mushrooms. I suspect they're Agaricus silvaticus. I've learned to smell the mushrooms now and they have a "pleasant spicy" smell. That means that they're probably not Agaricus praeclaresquamosus that have a "strong unpleasant" smell.

And the Leccinum Duriusculum has sprouted again in the grass under the poplar trees. The last time I saw a big group of them was on 13 september. Beautiful boletes that smell good and look very edible.

I'm now starting to apply the tricks I learned from the YouTube videos: picking up one mushroom, smelling it, looking at spore colours, looking at the attachment of gills to the cap and the stem. I know better what to look for and so I see more.