Mushroom Gills
I’m not much good when it comes to identifying mushrooms. I’m also not particularly interested in trying. I don’t know about my brothers but the memory of “the night of the mushrooms” still affects me, I think.
Dad used to pick mushrooms on the lawn at NIH where he worked and mom would use them in her cooking. Dad had identified them as safe and we ate them many times without any problem (so it wasn’t the mushrooms’ fault). One day he got to work and the grounds crew was mowing the grass. Since that would chop off the mushrooms, he picked them in the morning and kept them in a fridge at work. We never found out what happened, really, but have always assumed that the lawn had been sprayed with something before the mowers came. That night, after eating the mushrooms as part of our dinner, we all spent pretty much the whole night throwing up. It isn’t something you easily forget. I think most of us were a little put off mushrooms for a while. I’ve gotten over that, but eating wild-picked mushrooms, particularly those growing in cultivated lawns, is still something I’m hesitant to do.
In any case, this large mushroom, probably 5 inches across, came up over the site of one of the trees that was in our back yard. It looks like the squirrels have been nibbling on the edge of it. They are welcome to it. I’ll stick to store-bought chanterelles, porcini, morels, and shiitake (although I did grow my own shiitake mushrooms for a while).