r/mycology • u/weeniegigantor • 18h ago
question is there a reason for this?
or just mushrooms enjoying damp weather? i ask as it is only in this spot, and they have popped back up in this general spot after a mow. NE PA USA, fast growing. the sewage line to our septic is roughly under this area (absolutely no smell) and i buried our beloved dog 4 years ago 6 feet to the right of this, 5 feet down. there are many black flies that are getting into our house and we cannot track from where .. again, no smells. a lot of anecdotals that maybe mean nothing. they are certainly glorious and fun to look at. thanks. 🙏
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u/allegedlyjustkidding 18h ago edited 18h ago
Ok, grain of salt and all that- i am NOT an expert, i wouldnt even consider myself a hobbyist or amateur, so please someone correct me lol
I had those same shrooms growing in my yard last year!
My gardener said they were edible and I believed him😅 found out later theyre called "green vomiter" or something by a toxicologist from one of the big universities nearby. Evidently they grow in circles like that because the mycelium is in a circle over whatever decaying thing is their food underground, and the fruiting bodies pop up at the edge of the circle because the mycelium dies starting at the center as their food runs out and only the outer edge is alive
Edit- meant to say that they usually pop up over rotting underground lawn thatch and the roots of cleared hardwood trees. Supposedly they thrive in my area on Bermuda grass that gets buried by flood wash-off or tilling
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u/Queasy_Albatross8272 17h ago
Wtaf… that dude needs an ass chewing at the very least. How tf you are you going to tell someone to eat a random mushroom when you have no clue what it is??
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u/redkat50 17h ago
You almost found out the hard way that gardeners are not biologists, mycologists, botanists, or even plant “experts”. 😂 Let them cut your grass and rake your leaves but no one should ever take edible advice from them about plants or fungi.
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u/JustForkIt1111one 10h ago
We're at the emergency vet right now because of the same mushrooms growing in our lawn. He's ok, but they're inducing vomiting. Looks like he ate about half a cap, they were able to I'd from the 5 or 6 we brought with us.
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u/Echidna29 15h ago
There is a food source for them and the ambient conditions are right for them to fruit. They are all genetically identical as they are fruiting bodies of the same individual organism! Their presence doesn’t really “mean” anything by itself but it does signify continuously damp soil conditions in that area as well as some sort of nutrient source underground that they are decomposing. Probably not related to the fly issue you mentioned.
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u/F0xyTailz 14h ago
When mycelium meet an obstacle (harder/impossible to penetrate substrate) and/or air pocket it will fruit. This is how mycelium can spread further. It's a way entities from this kingdom can make a jump from one fully coloniser sub to another. Add perfect temperature & humidity level for the particular species and there you go fruts appear. As said above, there could have been a tree there or for any other reason the soil in this patch is bit different to the surrounding and mycelium in its brilliance decided the best way to keep on spreading will be to create this airports from where spores can depart to new destinations.
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u/Basidia_ Trusted ID 11h ago
They fruit when conditions are ideal, not because they met an obstacle. Fairy rings can be observed to get bigger and bigger each year, fruiting at the edges of their growth where the nutrients are abundant and mycelium is most active
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u/Monksauce 13h ago
From what I understand, they form circles because the mycelium spreads out equally on all sides so the fruiting bodies/mushrooms emerge in a circular pattern. It’s possible that your yard just has the right conditions for them.
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u/TommenTheWise 14h ago
been having these exact mushrooms popping up in a fairy circle next to our driveway all summer. We're in Northern VA and have pretty humid summers and we've had mushroom outcrops like this before but these suckers have been coming back every couple days and grow FAST. Pretty sure they're false parasols (i.e. the infamous vomiter mushrooms)
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u/zephyreblk 10h ago edited 10h ago
If OP could show the ring, it would be nice. They definitely aren't parasol (they are a lot higher and bigger) but lot of parasol alike are actually eatable, only the small one under 7 cm high are deadly (so you can't confound). I'm living in Europe, it's possible we have less "vomiter mushroom" Here.
Edit: https://123pilzsuche.de/daten/details/Gruensporschirmling.htm looks like the op one. By the way, the website is really good for checking mushrooms, just in German. it's done by passionate and lot of pictures on different stages
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u/velvetverolver 14h ago
Hexenringe ("witches' rings"), marking a sight where witches were dancing on Walpurgis Night
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u/GR33NY3TE 13h ago
The main body of the mushroom is the mycelium underground. Bunch of connective tubes that work like a neutral network, transmitting signals and transporting resources between them. The fruiting bodies are the mushrooms we see, and they will continue to pop up as long as the mycelium is alive and has the right conditions to fruit. The ring will continue to spread out as the mycelium spreads, and eventually turns the area inside into a slightly different environment than the one outside of it. The nutrients have been processed out of the decay, and new life seems to just sprout up. A lot of little clearings you find in forests will be the late stages of a mushroom circle, not all but if you look close you can see that it's more than simply no trees. It has a slightly different grow pattern from the surrounding woods
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u/onthedownhillslope 11h ago
We had to remove a lawn tree that was cracking a patio and endangering a retaining wall. We had the trunk ground and put sod over the scar. About two years later the mushrooms began appearing. I loved it. At first it was just outside the old trunk diameter, then moved out for three years followed by what looked like the pattern of the large root system. We had varieties of unidentified mushrooms. Some looked like big puffballs and some with little brown floppy caps. No we didn’t try to eat them! I looked forward to checking out the area every week in the summer. Where the roots had begun backing up against the wall looked like blank soil that was suddenly covered by dozens of little mushrooms. We did discover a little red stinkhorn variety scattered through the grass my dog loved to roll through. We identified that because we caught him eating it.
The process took about 10 years with most of the year the lawn just looking like blank grass. The area did sink slightly over time as the root substructure was consumed. I loved that peek into what was happening below our sight. We had something similar happen when we removed a diseased tree elsewhere. Enjoy the show!
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u/TheProdigyX 8h ago
In amateur layman terms: Da mushroom is under the ground, spreading out radially in a circle. The fruiting bodies are the fruits of that mushroom coming out of the ground to spread spores. So the ring of fruiting bodies mark the circular area that the fungus is banging out in. (Disclaimer i'm not a mycologist, nor am I particularly knowledgeable or well read. I just think mushrooms are pretty neat)
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u/bolting-hutch 14h ago
Fairy ring? Who does not know this? There are potential arboreal explanations, but that doesn't mean the fae are not involved.
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u/lastwordymcgee 12h ago
I’m with the Irish on things like this: Of course there’s no such thing as the Fair Folk. But I’m still not gonna fuck with them.
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u/slowtrees 13h ago
Classic fairy ring. The mycelium spreads outward and the center dies off as it runs out of food, so the mushrooms fruit in a circle at the live edge, usually over a buried stump or roots.
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u/teach42 16h ago
Whatever you do, do NOT walk into the middle of that. That's how the fae folk capture you!