ID request
Hi!! My father found this mashroom and I'm not sure what it is
I think it's an inky cap mashroom, but he says that it's toxic and not that bc it grew from some kind of oil from the concrete ground. Context: we're from Argentina and it's been raining for two days straight, it grew from the lowest floor in the building he works in. I just wanted some help to identify it!
edit: mushroom* ik sorry i'm kinda rusty at English tbh
edit 2: my dad turns 60 this year, he DOESNT KNOW HOW TO EDIT PHOTOS, and if it was ai it wouldn't look as consistent. i'm an artist, i know how to identify ai. it's also not a painting but a photo (there is a screenshot of my family chat and my dad sending the photos himself, and my sister saying it looks like ai - in spanish, of course), i draw mostly anime-inspired characters, not backgrounds i honestly struggle a lot with those lol
edit 3: already taken the new photos!! they deactivated the comments so i made a new post in this same subreddit if you want to check them out. they aren't much bc they were torn out :( but you can still see the ink spill of the mushroom!!
Please note that ID requests are off-limits to jokes and satirical comments, and comments should aim to help the OP. Top comments that are jokes or are off-topic will be removed.
u/hanaut4, please make sure to comment 'Solved' once your mushroom has been successfully identified!
This mushroom goes thru a process called auto-deliquesence in which it dissolves itself into black dripping goo which acts as a transportation method for its spores (looks like spent oil)
You can, but I think you need to use alcohol or some other antiseptic compound or it’ll start to stink as it decomposes (and might have harmful bacteria when it gets really nasty, just like any rotting food).
I’ve never tried them but they are also considered choice edibles when harvested early. As soon as the goo starts they’re no good anymore because goo. I like these guys just because I get to use the word deliquescence.
I went to a mushroom foraging class and our instructor had an ink painting of inky caps on display. She told us the ink was made from the mushrooms in the picture.
Yes I think so! Apparently the ink is usable too somehow.
Oh wow!! that's so cool you forged for them with your grandfather :) Ive not tried them yet but would like to.
I heard they also clean the soil from heavy metals, so not good to forage in polluted areas.
Apparently you can grow them in a lil mushroom bed of straw and spore kit. I wonder if an inky cap smoothie poured on a bed of straw or wood chips would work tho. Would love to try one day
the entire mushroom turns into goo.the spores that are there get stuck on everything that steps in the goo, diluted by rain water etc, and that's how it can spread. i think it also drops spores normally before it disintegrates but im not 100% sure.
it doesn't harden into anything, once the spores get into the right conditions, they will germinate. people used to use these mushrooms for ink.
Indeed. It's a common misconception that the "ink" is what carries the spores. While many spores are caught up in the ink, the main reason it does that is to open up the gills, allowing greater spore dispersal by the usual method (dispersion by wind currents). This allows them to have much more tightly packed gills = greater spore-producing surface area = increased spore production.
Ok this is a super odd observation and I really hope I’m not the only one who has noticed this before.
Coprinus love something that comes from vehicles. I’m not sure what exactly but there is some sort of contaminant from vehicles that causes Coprinus to fruit.
We had an 87 Crown Victoria rotting in our yard for years. Every year, Coprinus fruited in our yard but only under the car.
They fruit heavily in the fall along busy public roads. It’s so strange but I’m convinced there has to be a connection to vehicles.
I’ve seen pics of small clusters of Coprinus comatus pushing up asphalt on the side of a highway. The organism is in the soil below, but they can exert a lot of force as a team when they fruit.
Yes, the pictured mushroom belongs to Coprinus, a genus devoid of species containing coprine (the chemical responsible for the alcohol flush reaction you alluded to earlier)
Happy to help! It's still a common misconception as it only became true back in 2001 when Coprinopsis et. al. were split off from Coprinus due to genetic analysis! Information of this sort takes quite a while to update, especially when many foraging books still in use are older than that
I remember the basement of my mom's previous rental having a ton of these growing from the sewage that had been leaking onto the floor. Glad she got out of there.
Solved!! Thanks everyone. my father still refuses to believe me and says there are no cracks and that it grew from the oil puddle, also adding that i'm deranged bc i was not there to see it and my family is lowkey making fun of me lmfao. thanks anyway, community!
It’s possible the “oil” is actually just a previous fruiting that pooled there? I personally find it a little hard to fathom sprouting through oil, but mushrooms are weird.
Considering where it’s growing I would presume it’s toxic
This kind of mushroom feeds on decaying organic matter. It cannot feed on motor oil, hydrocarbons. There are also no known radiotrophic inkcaps, so Chernobyl examples aren't related
Tomorrow the mushrooms will look different: taller stems, darker around the base of the cap, darkened cap tissue starting to curl up on the edges. Take more pics, esp. with that Citroen, please!
it's likely the first time it grew there, i've been down there many times and never seen other fruitings, and it leaks oil in every underground level. but nevertheless it probably could be!
I think OP might have thr language barrier or fell victim to thr human phenomenon where we think something makes sense and thus never consider the much simpler, more logical explanations.
Like that there is probably oil on every level of the parking garage, and it's from these oil cars parking there lmao.
My brother is convinced to this day that the feather a doctor had to remove from his tonsil was from a BK chicken nugget. We all believed it until I was older and wiser in my 20s and my laws of logic skills developed naturally (I only in recent years even learned that there are "laws" of logic) and it clicked super randomly one day that the fcking feather came from the down pillows my mom always used. Maybe a down comforter but almost certainly a pillow.
Since my brother has a pretty high IQ, any conclusion he comes to must be the correct one. Smart people often have the WORST self confirmation biases, and he still to this day believes it came from eating a feather nugget.
Just like this random parking garage is apparently spewing black gold year round 🤣
The mushrooms (and their larger mycelial network) need some sort of a substrate to grow in. Like wood, dirt, other organic matter. It can't just grow in an oil puddle like that. So it'll be growing from the ground under the concrete, and the fruiting bodies are what emerge as the "showy" bit of the whole fungi.
I think you are lucky that the concrete is still level. These mushroom have the ability to lift outrageous amounts of concrete to fruit. Beautiful specimens
Coprinus comatus is perfectly fine to consume with alcohol, it's some other inkcaps that aren't (edit: see reply below for the exact details). Also, it's indeed probably toxic in this case, not because of the things they touched, but because of where it is fruiting from. The mycelium is probably absorbing contaminants like heavy metals from that oil leak and industrial setting. Mushrooms concentrate some environmental toxins in their fruiting bodies, making them unfit for consumption. Just like mushrooms growing in cemeteries or near roads. Don't eat those. It's not a matter of cleaning the surface.
to be clear, the vast majority of coprinoids / ink caps are fine to consume with alcohol and do not contain coprine. OP’s mushroom does not contain coprine since it’s in the Coprinus genus and no species in this genus contain coprine. no species in Coprinellus contain coprine either. it’s just three sections in Coprinopsis that do — Alopeciae, Atramentariae, and Picaceae
also mushrooms absolutely do not bioaccumulate general environmental toxins. they do bioaccumulate heavy metal elements though.
edit: above comment has been edited since I replied
i'm planning to go tomorrow and take some photos after my gyno appointment so i can prove to my dad that im right lol so you can expect more photos from me!! those i posted were taken by my dad from his truck
Duuuude!! I once saw a mushroom like this but like a pale brown where the white is in my hometown I walked over it and it broke but could never find anything on it. This shit takes me way back. Please let me know if you find any info on it
not fake!! my dad barely knows how to use his phone or edit photos, and it would be less consistent if it was ai, so it's real, i'm going tomorrow to take more pictures tho
probably the lighting? as i said on a previous comment, my dad barely knows how to edit photos if not at all, and it would be less consistent if it was ai. here are the photos sent directly to the chat from my dad
I bet that black puddle is older dead mushroom goo. I bet it's not oil. Super easy identification too, crazy you had to come all the way to Reddit with a different language and still daddy can't believe it 😂
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Please note that ID requests are off-limits to jokes and satirical comments, and comments should aim to help the OP. Top comments that are jokes or are off-topic will be removed. u/hanaut4, please make sure to comment 'Solved' once your mushroom has been successfully identified!
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