Fly Agarics, emerging Turkey Tails & a shroom that needs ID

[Don Boucher]

Hello,

Next to the beaver pond at Village Green Park (south end of the park) there are some Fly Agarics (Amanita muscaria). They've been present there for at least a few years, as we posted in 2019.

They are cliché mushrooms, appearing in video games, emoticons, children's books and more, but they're real. They are historically "magic" mushrooms and used since ancient times as a hallucinogen. They are also toxic and can cause nausea, low blood pressure and other neurologic problems but aren't deadly in any quantity that you would reasonably be consumed. Since there are better, safer hallucinogenic mushrooms and drugs out there, maybe it's best to simply admire Fly Agarics. They're found all over the world and their potency varies. Lisa covered them in our Fall 2015 Neighborhood Naturalist newsletter (also featuring Fox Sparrow).

BTW, the beavers seem to have been adding mud to the dam but no wood recently, nor can we find any freshly cut wood nearby.

In our backyard, there are Turkey Tail mushrooms (Trametes versicolor) emerging from a log. Interestingly, this log was inoculated with Oyster Mushroom spawn a couple years ago. One of the logs did produce a small quantity of oysters this fall but not this one. I think we misidentified the species of log because oysters don't grow on some hardwood species. It's interesting to watch the Turkey Tails get bigger and bigger.

On our block, there are some mushrooms emerging from an aspen stump (cut a few weeks ago) that we can't find in our field guides. They have no apparent staining or outstanding odor, other than a general mushroom odor. I have a spore print photo attached. I posted these photos on a Facebook mushroom ID forum yesterday and haven't yet received any feedback.

-Don Boucher

NE Corvallis

[Don A Boucher]

Someone on the Pacific Northwest Mushroom Identification Forum (Facebook group) pointed me toward Agrocybe praecox. I took another photo of younger mushrooms which include veils. I can't rule out other, closely related Agrocybe species but A. praecox  is likely. It's typically a spring species but can occur in fall.

-Don B.