Liberty caps growing on my front garden?

We've recently had new grass laid on our front (like 4 weeks ago) and today I just noticed we have some mushrooms growing in a little group. Anyway, I'm doing a spore print, but I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to see from it? I've heard if it's brown that's good, but I doubt any liberty cap look alike with a brown spore print is an actual psilocybin mushroom. I've tried pinching the stems gently to see if they bruise purple/blue, but they are far too small at the moment and the stems just break. My main question, however, is how do I know when (in terms of size/appearance) to pick them? Right now they're tiny, so I'll leave them for a while, but IF they are in fact liberty caps, I'd like to know when it'd be best to pick them, as I've heard it's best to pick them while they're still quite immature. And before anyone tells me, don't worry, I'm not going to eat them without knowing what the hell they are yet; I like being alive.





Nipple time:



I don't even think this one is the same type of mushroom...



The 1st and 3rd pics look kinda like liberty caps to me but, as you can tell, I'm not exactly a shroom expert. I understand that just by looking at these pics I won't get a 100% guarantee that they're what I'm looking for, but it's worth posting them anyway. Cheers for any advice, and sorry for the question(s) you've probably heard a thousand times already.

 

I am FAR from an expert on fungi, but those look like toadstools to me, like the kind we used to get where I grew up.
Be careful.

 

no no and no..

 

Unfortunately, they are most likely something like a brown hay cap, sometimes called the "mowers mushroom" because of its frequency in grass throughout summer... Not poisonous but not active. Quite nice tasting, I think.

It's quite hard to tell from those pics but let's go through a few things for you.

We have a centrically attached stem, a small size and close together spacing of the gills. The colours and shapes do not rule out them being an active mushroom. They are growing singly in a small crowd.

Is there a ring on the stem? Or any trace of a partial veil?

Are the gills free, seceding, adnexed, adnate or sinuate? From the pictures they shouldn't be uncinate, subdecurrent or decurrent.

Is the cap surface glutinous? What colour is the cap flesh?

Spore deposits for psilocybes are usually purple-brown to black. There are active mushrooms with other coloured spore prints but you generally want from brown to black.

Was the new turf layed on any decaying wood or anything that's not just regular dirt?

When you carefully tear the cap, is there a gelatinous membrane clinging to the cap between the torn parts?

There are other questions that you must ask to get a clear ID but these are good places to start.

 

From memory (I'll check again when I get the chance and update it):

- No ring or partial veil
- Adnexed gills
- The caps weren't glutinous, and their flesh was white/creamy
- Under the light of my phone (can't turn the lights on) it's a dark brown/black after about 12 hours
- The grass was laid on just regular old dirt from the previous grass which was dug up (hence all the bloody foxes digging it up looking for worms or whatever; I had to sprinkle piss on/around it to scare them off... yay for testosterone)
- I don't remember seeing/feeling any jelly-like stuff

Out of interest, would the maturity of the mushroom change whether or not it has a glutinous cap flesh, or the gelatinous membrane? Also, what would it growing on something like wood mean? We had a couple of weird looking mushrooms growing under out bath from all the damp (cowboy builder/plumber job, grr) on the wood.

 

Yes, it would change it to some degree, especially if it has been dry weather or what have you. When I say glutinous cap, I mean the surface of the mushroom, not the flesh in the cap. And by glutinous I mean a slightly slimy, moist feel to it.

Different species of mushrooms like to grow in different types of habitat and the habitat they are found in is a major factor in identifying them. Your classic liberty cap is more of a grassland mushroom, whereas others will grow in decaying (soemtimes not decaying) wood and others in shit (coprophiles).

It is worth finding out what time of year certain mushrooms grow in your part of the world, this also contributes to the identifying of them. It is the time of year and habitat which suggests to me the brown hay cap, as that is a common small grassland mushroom at this time of year where I am. They don't quite look like the average hay cap, though.

Dark brown/black is a positive shade but don't let it fool you, did you spore print more than one? It's best to do at least 4.

The best thing to do, IMO, is to ensure they are not poisonous, then dose them. If they don't make you trip then at least you won't die and you've found a nice little source of edible mushrooms.

REMEMBER to save your spore prints as you can use them to distribute spores to wherever you please, even onto your lawn again so more grow! Psilocybes love disturbed habitats, like a lot of mushrooms, which is why they're on your lawn, I think. They will only be there for about 3 years, I reckon, at the most. After that it will not be optimum mushroom ground as it will have become settled.

And if you eat them, save a sample. You may need it for future reference or (god forbid) a sample for the hospital.

 

They don't seem to have a darker margin (area around the outside of the cap) so that's not a good sign... Are they growing in a sort of ring formation or just randomly?

Probablt not brown hay cap as I earlier suspected, I seem to have got it mixed up with something else. The brown hay cap is listed as inedible and potentially very weakly active! So you could probably trip on it with no ill effects if you ate quite a large amount. But these might not be that. Search for some images to see if you get a match from the brown hay caps.

They don't seem tall or pointed enough to be liberty caps.

Could still possibly be - pelliculosa, silvatica or strictipes. There's a few for you to try and match them up to.

This is really way too in the zone of LBM to be sure...

 

I did one spore on aluminium and threw it away after I found out what colour it was, but I'll do some more.

I think there's a few odd ones different from the rest. About the darker margin, the last one seems significantly darker from the rest of the cap around the edge. I don't think they were growing in a ring formation, just a small bunch with a couple of others both growing about an arms distance away from the main group. They seem to have shrunk or hidden away over the period of one day since I first noticed them.

I think even I've worked out myself that they aren't liberty caps, so hopefully they're still active.

About distributing the spore prints (real n00b question here), how do I go about that? Just dump the spore prints on the grass/dirt?

Thanks a lot for the help btw, much appreciated.

 

You're very welcome.

To distribute the spores all you need to do is move the spore print and loads will go flying. If you want them to grow in a certain place then you could probably just blow firmly over the spore print at where you want them to go.

A great gift to the world is spore printing an active mushroom onto an item of clothing and then you will distribute spores wherever you go with those clothes! 7

The one with the darker margin could the same species but a little more mature, it does share some similar characteristics. Or it could be different... It's really hard to tell, sometimes. It is usually quite unusual for mushrooms to grow singly, though harmful types have been known to do just that in a group of active mushrooms.

Thing is, people are usually too scared of poisonous mushrooms. A lot of them would require you to eat quite a lot to be deadly poisoned and still a reasonable amount to feel any serious ill effects. Don't use that as a license to chow down on anything, though.

 

Oh ok, cheers. I shoulda kept the spore thing I had; I didn't think it was any good after I found out what colour it was, plus it was on tin foil which I hear is bad so I was gonna do another one. Unfortunately, I went back to the spot this afternoon to see they were gone. I think one of the builder guys either ate them or crushed them with the bag of stones I saw there lol. Hopefully they'll grow back though.

Also, I asked on shoomery if anyone could ID it for me - as they all seem to be pretty quick to identify them on there - but no replies so far. I'll just check out some more UK fungi and see what I can match it with. Gaaah, I hate how hard these things are to identify/grow without killing/buy. I don't seem to have much luck getting hold of any substances I wanna try... even finding someone to buy greens off is getting harder now.

 

Aaaah, well if you're in the UK then it's not quite season yet. Very very very very very close, though. So maybe there are some early ones coming up, who knows?

 

It's September - November or something, isn't it? I'm gonna head over to the local park & fields and see what I can find. I think I've got a good idea of what liberty caps look like now, and I've heard there's a good amount of shrooms over there.

 

Where abouts the UK are you?

 

Ilford in London/Essex (unfortunately).

 

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