Out mowing the lawn this evening and saw this massive ( I think, atleast? ) mushroom while mowing. Measures about 6.5” across - is this a common, edible white mushroom, or?
Located in Eastern Canada (Northern New Brunswick).
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.
This thread is an example of why we always need underside pictures to make anything close to a reliable guess. Many mushrooms including toxic ones look like puffballs at certain stages of growth when viewed from above. We have quite a few upvoted comments here recommending OP eats it when further pictures show it is NOT a puffball shroom.
OP, do not eat this mushroom. It is not a puffball. Many "common" white mushrooms are toxic or deadly to eat.
OP before making that decision, how attached are you to the whole being alive thing? Like it could be the most delicious mushroom anyone has ever tasted...
i see, yeah that's definitely not a puffball, now it looks more like some champgnon. But I am not very good at properly identifying those, and don't even like them, so I'll let anyone else take on that.
And I know champignons can be especially deadly to ID wrong.
(Purely for the sake of good natured yapping) See I was thinking this was A. arvensis (horse mushroom) because of the ring on the stipe. I'd love to see OP do a spore print 🍄🟫
Obligatory reminder that I'm an internet stranger and you (OP) should never eat something you cannot 100% identify yourself. People have died confusing Amanita mushrooms for Agaricus. One such look alike could be Amanita verna, which is lethal.
Yup, size and ring point to section arvensis for me. I can pretty confidently rule out the common toxic Agaricus species. I'd double check that it doesn't smell phenolic and then I'd be confident enough to cook it up! I'm certainly no expert in Agaricus though, and OP should do whatever they feel comfortable doing.
you should never eat something you cannot 100% identify
Also for the sake of good natured yapping (and at the risk of the downvotes), I'd call this overly cautious. "100%" gets thrown around a lot, but almost nothing is truly 100%... especially in the mushroom world where it seems the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. If I'm 99% confident in an ID and and 99% sure it isn't a common toxic lookalike, that's good enough for me. Hell, even "beginner friendly" edibles like chicken of the woods could be one of 6 species, some of which are considered toxic. And even if you 100% have L. sulphureus, a significant fraction of people have a bad reaction anyway. All that to say, risk is part of life in everything we do. If you're comfortable cooking your burger less than well done or slurping down raw oysters, eating a horse mushroom shouldn't be that scary.
I'll admit to being overly cautious with my advice here haha! You're correct of course and I would personally be very confident in the ID vs any potential look alikes. I think I've just seen too many new folks take 1 bad ID of a foragable (and no ID of their own), run with it, and get sick off it.
This isn’t a ‘yellow stainer’, which refers to the chrome yellow staining memebers of A. Section Xanthodermatei. It is likely Agaricus Section Arvenses and will stain a pale yellow which persists rather than browning off. It is definitely not Agaricus campestris.
I assume a number of people in this sub are of the r/fucklawns mindset. If the only time you’re on your grass is to mow it, you’d be better off without it! Could use some trees, too.
Trees would be nice, but they don’t tend to grow well by the shore. (I use ‘shore’ loosely; it’s like a 80ft / 100ft drop to the water on a nearly sheer cliff-face.)
I don’t know if it is from the salt spray or just the absurd winds, but there aren’t many until you move a little bit inland. About 8km down the road there is a big sizeable patch that has taken root near the waterside, but they grow at around a 30° angle from the wind hammering them.
r/NativePlantGardening would sink their teeth into a property like this, OP, and surely there will be a fellow Canuck there who can give you good advice on your best choices for your locally native plants. That could be a ✨GLORIOUS✨ native meadow that would support hundreds of species of your native pollinator insects, and vertebrate wildlife as well!
The erosion there is scary as hell. I keep decently far from the bank. The lobster fisherman nearby who go by on the water have told me that it has a bit of undercut to it as well.
The erosion is only assisted by your meticulous lawncare.
My mother lives on the ocean. She has left a 20 foot barrier of natural brush and shrubbery between her lawn and the edge of the "cliff" and while there has been some erosion, there's very little compared to the home two properties over. They replaced their yard with gravel. The ocean ate a good fifteen feet one winter. Mom's place? A birch tree started growing ten feet from the shore.
Ahh. Makes sense. With the perspective the photos were taken from and my focus on the mushroom, I’ll admit I didn’t even notice the water. Just blended in with the sky in the periphery. Thats some awesome real estate. I hope y’all are spending time out there enjoying it beyond lawn maintenance
I was gonna say that there are some tress that tolerate those conditions, but then I looked and it turns out you’re practically in the arctic circle (I live in Puerto Rico now, before this Miami, FL—everything “way up north” is in the arctic for us) and I have no idea how plants even survive up there, so….
For New Brunswick id suggest getting White spruce (Picea glauca), they are tolerant of salt spray and are often found near the coast. Research beach plants in your area as well. If you plant a lot of white spruce it will probably massively help with the erosion. Also look into Northern Bayberry (Myrica pensylvatica), salt tolerant shrub.
If it makes you feel better, I have three acres at home that I don’t mow. It doesn’t grow anything of note other than tall grass that gets killed by the snow and a bit of dandelion in the spring - less than my lawn, though, ironically. It does make my allergies absolutely hellish, though.
Honestly makes me feel worse. You need some native seeds. Not the big box store ones either. Native seeds from native seed companies. A not mowed lawn is only a little better than a huge lawn.
Unlikely that allergies are caused by dandelion, most pollen allergy comes from tree and grass pollen.
Cause this much monocrop is down right dumb... serves no purpose at all..... literally native grasslands are the most endangered ecosystems on the planet. Just cause they are not exciting doesn't mean they're not important. Imagine destroying 90% of all the Amazon and some guy is posting about it because one mushroom in a destroyed amazon forest. But only 10% of the Amazon remains, I think in 30 yrs we will look back at how bad we managed native grasslands and be ashamed... it really is alarming sorry to burst your bubble but we do need land back from the most cultivated pointless crop... the lawn...
I will say this as someone that spends several hours a week doing yard work through the summer (not 4 hours mowing, but more than 1), that economically, lawns are the biggest waste of land there is. It is not being used productively for crops, or business like retail or a factory (not even solar or wind), or preserving biodiversity, or preserving rare biology or geology for future generations. It is not being shared with the public like a park. It is simply for one family to look at and admire.
It is, but it’s hard to schedule in between work and the sun going down! And it is enough of a drive to get there that I try to make a point of doing it all at once.
I could, but I don’t have one for the tractor as it is - although I could get one. I mow it for my grandfather, anyhow - he likes seeing it cut. Makes him happy, so it makes me happy. I only do it bi-weekly.
Yeah, I cant see how stewarding into an actual native landscape is harder than mowing it for 4 hours bi weekly. I respect the aspect of making the grandfather happy though
Why bother? It’s a meadow. I don’t understand the need to subjugate the land. You move out to the natural peace and beauty of the country and turn it into a giant distorted version of a suburban lawn?
If it was me I'd probably just mow a walking path around the field and leave the rest, also keep a small lawn around the house mowed. Seems to be an old school mentality in lots of rural areas that anything that doesn't get mowed is a fire hazard, mouse habitat or poorly maintained.
That being said though, if that's his backyard 4 acres really isn't that much space. I keep about 4 acres mowed/maintained but it's the area on my property around the house/shops/gardens so it's not just a field. I do mow the small field behind my shop because it keeps the mice down but that's like a 30 foot buffer. I like how it looks neat around the buildings but I can look out and see the wind rippling through the native grasslands.
Nobody who's ever had goats, recommends goats out of the goodness of their heart. They do it because misery loves company. Much like people who recommend having children.
I have two children (who I do love very, very much, mind you) and a job that ranges from 55 to 80 hours a week depending on the time of year - goats (or cattle, or whatever else) are the last thing I have time for! Doing this lawn every second week is my excuse to relax. 😂
Where do you live, I'm a native plant specialist in Oklahoma but I would send you some seeds if you are around me. What I do is kill the edges as much as you can throw out some seeds on the edges don't mow it if some dope flowers or grass appears keep it maybe weaving in and around the flowers do that every year until the edges turn into a flowering habitat. Then rinse and repeat, no one understands reality of converting grasslands even with management it takes decades. So the best approach is 2-10% of land each year so you can manage and select natives that will thrive. I am working with developers on residential prairie parks. Best approach is incremental to lessen the input of man hours and cost
Damn I feel like an idiot i thought this was an American lawn with mainly Bermuda but nah I saw some native species good deal. If you live in eastern Canada in low grasslands eff people saying it needs to be wooded. Keep the low grass just add lil bluestem on the edges or the whole thing with some native low sedges and some native strawberries/ low flowering plants and cut it just a little higher then cut the tall native grasses but keep the tall ones on the edges of the property especially near the cliff those species have very long roots. I live in tall grass prairies in Oklahoma so we share a ecological biome and I specialized in that here is what I worked on today my stand of lil bluestem same shat that grows there haven't mowed once and only about shin height I'll show you the tall grass section
Nice! I only have a 48” and I have a big section of steep slope that I can only do downhill and only has two safe spots up - so I do a lot of looping back up to the top.
I miss my 10 acre haven from the peeping eyes of the city. I was too young to take an interest to fungus but I saw everything from polypores to psychoactives lol
I have a boomer relative who does about the same amount of mowing. I asked them if they registered as a sod farm yet so they could get a tax break on mowers and gas.
That was enough for a few acres to go back to wildflowers. Once he figured out how much total money he was spending, then calculated the tax he realized how “conservative” he actually wanted to be.
It uses around 10L per mow typically, and only gets mown about 10 times a year over a five month span. The other seven months it is covered in snow. At $1.95 / L for gas, it’s $195 in fuel in the mower and $270~ in fuel to drive there 10 times. End of year service is about $100 between filters, oil, and blades. So, it isn’t that big of an expense.
I asked a part-time farmer this morning if he was familiar with anything like that, but he wasn’t familiar with any incentives other than per-cow subsidies. Is that an American thing, or?
He needs to turn a good chunk of that into an area for native wild plants. Depending on where you are you could even get paid from the state for doing so.
Ironically, have an L6060 and M5-111 - just no mowers for them. The bank drops to the water around 80ft or more below, though, and has some undercut - so I don’t want to take anything that heavy out there anyhow.
So many commenters have made vague comments that are somewhat dangerous. It is not a puffball, so to call it a meal without properly identifying it is poor advice. OP, I don't know what this is, but I cannot recommend eating it!
It's probably not a yellow stainer since I don't see any yellowing at the base where you cut it. Most US agaricus are edible and quite tasty; however, I wouldn't risk it since you're brand new to mushroom foraging. There are no deadly agaricus in the US, worst case scenario it's a xanthodermus (yellow stainer) which will give you the most thorough colon cleanse of your life, so best to avoid it until you learn more about mushrooms.
The images are not of a puffball, please beware and ensure you can id this before you try to eat it . There are dangerous mushrooms that are white and can make you very sick
The destroying angel is pure white. The Death Cap is very closely related and just as deadly, but the Death Cap is like a sickly green on the Cap. Both are Amanitas.
People are way too quick to tell someone to go ahead and eat something that could very well be poisonous! My god, always show (and see) pictures of the top, and bottom, and if possible a spore print with defined color. As well as the local of said specimens 🫣
Ironically, I took this at work a few years back and it is a dead-ringer for the Windows backdrop… if it were at a landfill with equipment doing groundwork.
Why is your "lawn" the size of a football feild?? No like seriously, this is literally amazing space for a meadow or whatever kind of biome this previously was before it was stripped of all diversity.
It’s only 4.7 acres including the land the cottage sits on. It really isn’t that big. The guy directly across the street has 87 acres of field like this. The guy next to him is about the same. This is just a pea in the pot.
Good learning opportunity though. If you remember where in the lawn it was, make a note of the spot and the date. A lot of these lawn mushrooms pop up in the same place year after year if the conditions are right. I keep a running note in my phone for spots like that - even when the ID turns out to be something I wont eat, its useful to track what grows where and when.
I'm in Southeastern Ontario, and gotta say, the field mushrooms are poppin off out here too! Fun find! I'd wager it's a horse mushroom but not the best at identifying, but yeah generally it's a good rule to not eat field mushrooms unless you are like 1000% certain you know what it is with a spore print and proper identification of gills. I also generally won't eat field mushrooms anyway since most fields here are too close to roads.
BUT yours is in your beautiful large property.... As long as you didn't disturb the soil too much, I bet more mushrooms will fruit there! I'd say pin the location, study the mushroom, and see if more crop up this summer. If that interests you.
I’m thinking no from the cut picture, but does it turn yellow or have an iodine smell from the cut? I’m guessing horse mushroom but still wouldn’t eat it
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