It’s been pretty damp out, so it’s not a big surprise to see a lot of toadstools and mushrooms growing out in the flower beds.
But these are really gross! They start out looking like ordinary, white mushrooms. After a day or so, the white caps start to separate, and then expand into these large orange-golf ball looking things, with the white skin still on them, looking like foam.
They’re really nasty and vaguely obscene. What the hell are these things?
Sounds like a variety of puffball. Do the domes eventually burst or collapse? Is there an extremely fine powder within?
Was it one of these: Fly Agaric
I wouldn’t know if they’re puffballs, because I pulled them out and tossed them in the woods (before the dog gets hold of them)
Desmostylus-sort of! Only they’re orange, not red, the white isn’t such a regular pattern. Perhaps they’ll end up developing like that, if I’d let them go. The one on the bottom of that picture sort of looks like it, but it’s too blury to tell.
Maybe it’s a variety, or a related species?
Is it this?
Oh, man. Some people have all the luck 
Eh, it’s somewhere in between those two.
As that cite notes the colors on Fly Agarics can vary a fair bit, from a pale yellow to a deep red, including shades of orange. It’s a reasonable guess that’s what they are, though a photo would help.
By the way, I might note that despite their reputation as being hallucinogenic, aparently many populations ( especially in North America ) are largely lacking in psychoactive compounds and eating them will do little more than make you sick as a dog.
I’m with Desmostylus on the Amanita (of some species or other), although there are other fungi where the cap retains scales.
In any thread about wild mushrooms it is worth mentioning the danger of death from eating misidentified wild fungi - in particular, the complete unreliability of any ‘rules of thumb’ - fungi that are deadly poisonous in very small quantities may look, smell and taste appetising, they may be observed to have been eaten safely by wild animals etc - the only safe way to eat wild mushrooms is to get a good book on the subject (For Northern Europe, I enthusiastically recommend Roger Philips’ *Mushrooms* and make sure that the fungus you are picking matches exactly with every single descriptor in the entry for that species.
I have no desire to eat any of them, believe me! I just want to keep the puppy from getting ahold of them!
When I first read it I misread and thought you were referring to inky caps however after rereading you will need to give more details. I thougth inky caps because they melt into black goo after a few days.
Is the cap a solid orange or do they have speckles on them? (If they are speckled and have the veil below they are most likely amanitas which can vary in colour from white to green to red). Does the cap have an unusual looking sponge like appearance on the top? (like a borel) Are the gills (the underside) spongy and porous, gilled, or spikey? (porous gills usually refer to boletus mushrooms. Interestingly enough, you can scrape the spongy underside and they stain dark blue from the light orange they normally are). Is the stem solid or is there a veil (a ring of stem skin around it again amanita)? Is the stem noticeable from the cap or is it more like a little orange globe? If it is a puffball, they are usually hollow inside or very light.
I don’t expect you know how to do a spore print. Basically you put a mushroom on a sheet of wax paper with the gills facing towards it and cover them with a bowl so the spores don’t fly everywhere. After a few days the spores fall out and they have unique shapes (like circles, triangles, lines, etc) and colors. This isn’t always essential in identifying the mushrooms but oftentimes it is the only way to tell poisonous ones from their nonpoisonous though identical looking ones.
When I first read it I misread and thought you were referring to inky caps however after rereading you will need to give more details. I thougth inky caps because they melt into black goo after a few days.
Is the cap a solid orange or do they have speckles on them? (If they are speckled and have the veil below they are most likely amanitas which can vary in colour from white to green to red). Does the cap have an unusual looking sponge like appearance on the top? (like a borel) Are the gills (the underside) spongy and porous, gilled, or spikey? (porous gills usually refer to boletus mushrooms. Interestingly enough, you can scrape the spongy underside and they stain dark blue from the light orange they normally are). Is the stem solid or is there a veil (a ring of stem skin around it again amanita)? Is the stem noticeable from the cap or is it more like a little orange globe? If it is a puffball, they are usually hollow inside or very light.
I don’t expect you know how to do a spore print. Basically you put a mushroom on a sheet of wax paper with the gills facing towards it and cover them with a bowl so the spores don’t fly everywhere. After a few days the spores fall out and they have unique shapes (like circles, triangles, lines, etc) and colors. This isn’t always essential in identifying the mushrooms but oftentimes it is the only way to tell poisonous ones from their nonpoisonous though identical looking ones.
Why ‘nasty?’
You mean covered with slime? Intense revolting stench? Extremely Freudian shape? If so, then you’ve got Phallaceae, very weird and interesting mushroom.
Phallus Impudicus common stinkhorn
Compared to these above, other mushrooms are mudane and not at all nasty.
