In the last couple of weeks, I have started noticing mushrooms. LOTS and LOTS of mushrooms. More mushrooms than I have ever seen before. In my backyard, at work (where the immaculately manicured sod/turf even has them this year!), at the park, everywhere I go. I think it’s amazing–I know mushrooms are very persistent and are, of course, around every year, but I’ve never seen this many.
But, then, my “parental” worries start to take over. See, I’ve got this little boy, 8 months old, and I usually just toss him out into our fenced backyard to pee, etc. Lately, when I’ve done this in the morning, I go to let him in and find him licking or snacking on some kind of mushroom. (:eek: ). This is not good. Many mushrooms, as anyone knows, are deadly poisonous. So, I’ve been running around the backyard destroying any mushroom I can find, yet still he manages to find some. I was very concerned (and I still am, even though he’s not sick). I tried to look up and identify these mushrooms, and realized that most mushrooms look pretty much the same except for some little details. So, during the course of my research I managed to scare myself to death thinking that the shrooms in the backyard could be death caps, but finally decided that they didn’t look like those at all. Sanity prevailed. I am 95% sure that the mushrooms in my backyard are Russula variata. They look exactly like the one in the lower picture, top right-hand corner. They break easily (like chalk), and have white gills (I need to check for the forking when I get home). The qualities of color, size, shape, texture, gills, stem, etc. all converge to match the shrooms in my backyard. Thankfully, they don’t appear to be poisonous, and are apparently actually edible.
My pup seems to like them very much. Or maybe he’s more interested in digging out the little blue people I’ve seen living underneath them. . .but that might’ve had something to do with mushrooms I may have eaten.
I’m still on guard since new mushrooms pop up every single freaking morning, I’ll never know what might be out there tomorrow morning. Stupid fungus.