I'm always looking for city mushrooms in nature and culture.
Interesting to see how fungi invade our world.
Like I said in the previous post: this is a wretched obsession. It is pure drudgery to find the names of fungi and often they're impossible to name. Here I'll try to name the unnamable ones.
28 September - Besides an asphalt road leading to offices in Gouda. The picture shows why I'm interested in fungi. This one is as beautiful as a flower but stranger and more ephemeral. Maybe it's: Parasola plicatilis. It certainly looks like a member of the Coprinus genus. But this genus now has been split into four different ones and I don't know which name is correct. And I love mushroom experts complaining about the difficulty of the trade:
Simply getting some inky caps home to study can be a challenge, since many are so ephemeral that they appear, liquefy, and turn into black goo within a matter of hours. Identification of these short-lived mushrooms (did I mention that they all look pretty much the same?) hinges on microscopic examination of various erudite features, and is an enterprise best left to folks who enjoy such endeavors.
This might be another inky cap: Coprinus micaceus. Seen in the city park.
This might be: Panaeolus foenisecii. Or: Panaeolus olivaceus. This was in the parking lot of a suburban hotel. One of the most common mushrooms. It grows anywhere near grass. In my book it's next to Psilocibe, but this one should not be hallucinogenic.
And this could be: Tricholoma argyraceum. In the same hotel parking lot.
And this could be: Hebeloma mesophaeum. These were found in the shrubbery next to an office block next to the train station. It was an unpleasant, rubbery and slightly slimy mushroom. Inedible and bitter, says the book. I wonder if I'll see them again next year.
This could be some Marasmius, but I'm not sure.
Marasmius? Entoloma? Mycena?
This could be: Pholiota mutabilis. Excellent mushroom, says the book. But it often grows together with a similar, but deadly mushroom: Gallerina marginata. But more probably, it could also be: Armillaria mellea. I should have returned a week later, when they had matured.
This might be: Dacrymyces stillatus. It's microscopic and only visible because of its color. One day it was there and the other day it was gone. I despaired of ever determining it, but it seems to be very common and it had a prominent place in my new mushroom book.
Urban mushroom diary:
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, 7:Switzerland to Rotterdam, 8: Warffemius mushroom paintings, 9: Münster, documenta14 and Rotterdam, 10: Spore prints, 11: Dead man's fingers, 12: The lower Rhine, 13: Oostvoorne, 14: Rotterdam, 15: Rotterdam, the easy species, 16: Gouda, the difficult species, 17: Urban winter mushrooms.
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