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These grow alone, up to 7 cm in height. The cap measures about 4 cm in diameter.
These grow near my compost, but also on grass, on autum.
I've uploaded 2 pictures of another one found a few feet away, on the grass for a better look.
This seems to be a Coprinoid, and by the looks, it could be a Parasola sp. According to Gully.Moy
Spotted on Mar 6, 2012
Submitted on Apr 16, 2013
8 Comments
Thanks! sure is a good deal. USB camera attachments sound good, will look into those.
There is a lot more to look at, I'm thinking tardigrades also.
I just picked up an excellent second hand binocular compound microscope with 100x oil immerion lens from ebay for 100 USD + shipping. A monocular one could be found cheaper and a decent USB camera attachment can be picked up for around $50.
Not insanely expensive and there's a lot more than mushrooms to look at. There's also a lot to learn though.
Thanks Gully.Moy, what a detailed account!
The spores are tiny! Too bad about the USB microscopes, though there are some regular microscopes with a USB camera attached to them, but they are not cheap. Probably when my kids get bigger and appreciate it better.
With regards to the microscope. You can see spores at about 100x zoom, but they are very small at this level and you can't really use the images for identification routines such as measuring them or looking at their internal structure. For identification purposes a compound microscope with a 100x oil immersion lens and a 10x eyepiece is recommended, totalling 1000x zoom. USB microscopes aren't up to it yet as any offering high zoom lack the resolution to back it up.
So about Coprinoid fungi. The term refers to a large and diverse group of mushrooms which were previously put in the genus Coprinus, of which C. comatus is the 'type species'. However the similarities between these mushrooms which mycologists used to place them in the Coprinus genus have since been shown to be largely superficial and thus Coprinus was stripped of nearly all it's other mushrooms and they were redistributed between the three new genera Parasola, Coprinellus and Coprinopsis, all of which are much more closely related to each other than true Coprinus species such as C. comatus. We now refer to these mushrooms as Coprinoid to recognise their superficial similarities, without bundling them into one genus.
Within these three genera there are many mushrooms which look a lot like the one you have there. Very often they end up getting called Parasola plicatilis by amateurs with no means of identifying them to species with certainty. So if you Google image search 'Parasola plicatilis' you are likely looking at many different species of mushroom which have been mislabelled.
The powder I was looking for is the remnants of a universal veil which is not present on Parasola species so would point to either Coprinellus or Coprinopsis. The fact that you noted no powder suggests Parasola, but of course it could have washed off! Haha.
However the growth pattern and habitat also suggest Parasola to me. And seeing as the genus contain the most mushrooms with this macroscopic morphology I would say that it is very likely a Parasola species :-)
Thanks Maria.
@Gully.moy: Thanks for the ID. There didn't seem to be any powdery texture on these.
I've uploaded 2 pictures of another one found a few feet away, on the grass.
I do have Coprinus comatus and it's nothing like it. It does resemble very closely the Parasola description.
Do you have an idea on how much zoom does a microscope need to have to see the spores? I've been looking into getting my hands on one (USB).
Not a Mycena, this first give away being the black spore deposits on the stem. It is a Coprinoid of some description. Parasola genus is a possibility but I couldn't rule out Coprinellus or even Coprinopsis 100%. Did the top have a powdery texture?
http://www.mushroomexpert.com/coprinoid....
Beautiful shots