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Old May 31, 2017   #69
bower
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
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My thoughts too, they are overmature so it gets harder to tell... if there weren't enough little brown mushrooms in the world to be confusing anyway!
There are some steps I would follow if I wanted to know what a mushroom in my garden is. First is to find a group which contains immature as well as mature specimens if possible. This way if there is an annulus (ring around the stem) you will find it at earlier stages. Secondly dig or pull the mushrooms right out of the ground and take a picture to see the shape of the stipe (stem). Third, cut a specimen right down the middle of the stem, cap and all. Take another picture. This will show gill attachment characters and important colors. If the gill color is different in immature specimens, picture or note that as well.
Fourth and extremely important, take a specimen and cut the stipe away from the cap. Place the cap on a piece of white card or paper, gills facing down, and either bag it or cover it with a bowl overnight. This will produce a spore print - the color of the spore print is extremely important in the gilled mushrooms especially, as it will allow you to rule out whole families with the wrong color of spores.
Most of the little brown gilled mushrooms are in the "No Eatums" category for me, the risk of confusion is large so I would rather just avoid them, personally, while so many others are well known , easily identified, and faves.
OTOH if you have a large patch that repeats, why not find out what they really are.
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