Urban mushroom diary - autumn 2016

Each autumn I look forward to the appearance of the mushrooms. They don't appear in nature exclusively, they also appear in culture. Suddenly you see them in shops, in restaurants and in the media. It's interesting to see how fungi take over the world - for one season.

Previous mushroom observations from 2015 are here: 1:Start of the obsession, books, lawns, 2:Dreams, lawns, books and newspapers, 3:Gouda shop windows, 4:Rotterdam lawn, 5:Hoek van Holland wood, 6:Autumn newspapers.

I'll start with the mushroom pictures that I saw in the free Metro magazine and I'll finish with an XKCD comic. The free Metro pictures have passed an impressive array of selection filters: you notice mushroom - you photograph it - you mail it to Metro - editors select and publish the picture. So it's a small, but representative cultural sample.

A little pearl - Natasja Bergen - Metro - 7 september 2016 - Amanita muscaria

What can we conclude from this small sample:

• this year we had a very long (cultural) mushroom season: september - december
• big, conspicuous, beautiful and culturally relevant mushrooms get noticed and photographed
• people like mushrooms and associate them with other symbols of autumn (thank you captain obvious!)
• it is (almost) impossible to determine mushrooms from photographs

Then I saw these glass mushrooms in a fashion shop in Thun, Switzerland - 14 September 2016

As usual in "cultural" (not "cultured") mushrooms, these are: Amanita muscaria

I'm totally not ready for autumn - Pascal Doeleman - Metro - 19 September 2016
This could be: Leccinum aurantiacum, probably not Boletus erythropus

The mushrooms are coming again - Ingrid Altena - Metro  - 26 September 2016

Possibly: Lepiota procera probably not Agaricus sylvaticus

Then I saw these autumn symbols in a household shop in Rotterdam - 1 October 2016

Amanita muscaria again, combined with autumn leaves, pine cones, gnomes, pumpkins and several small forest animals.

Autumn in our garden - Geny B-v.T - Metro  - 28 October 2016

Possibly: Lepiota procera

Close up of a mushroom - Hetty van Veen - Metro  - 20 November 2016

Impossible to determine ...

Then I saw these mushroom-lamps in a household shop in Rotterdam - 20 November 2016

Again: Amanita muscaria and some phantasy mushrooms (or pine trees?)

The beauty of nature in autumn - Joy de Bruin - Metro  - 30 November 2016

Wooden mushrooms as a Christmas decoration - 10 December 2016

Most likely: Boletus and Coprinus :-)

A mushroom placemat in the pancake house in the woods - 26 December 2016

Mold shapes made from a woolen carpet - 31 December 2016

Lizan Freijsen - The living surface - in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Yes, this is true - https://xkcd.com/1749/

And from Google Trends it's obvious that interest in mushrooms is a seasonal phenomenon.

The peak seems to lie in September and October.

This is the search frequency for (in Dutch): mushroom, fly agaric and boletus edulis.