The mushroom, Amanita caesarea, a.k.a. Caesar's mushroom. Though it is supposedly nonpoisonous, the recommendation is not to eat ANY North American Amanita. I read this in "Mushrooms of North America- by Orson K. Miller, Jr." This particular Amanita is surreal in that it looks like something from the "Wizard of Oz". I half expected a knome to pop out from underneath. I found these specimens on an old logging road. The soil was on the dry side, lots of White Pine needles.The waterfall is in Walpole, NH. A friend told me where to look, so I set out this morning on my mountain bike. This falls appears to be toward the bottom of what I believe might be Aldrich Brook? It's just off the Wentworth Rd, past where the pavement ends. Wentworth Rd is accessible from Rte 12, as well as from BlackJack Crossing Rd. I imagine that in the spring this spot is roaring. The pool at the bottom provides home to native brookies, not more than 5" long. I made my way further up the brook, and found a neat place that looked like a series of basins. Perfectly carved round bowls creating "S" turns as the brook cut its way through the granite over thousands of years. With moss growing everywhere on the rocks and ground, I could easily have mistaken this place for a rainforest.
The second day of this mushroom's existence proved interesting. The cap opened up to about 4" across. The gills started to turn brown, and insecting were already beginning to devour it. The stalk and cap remained ivory white. I'm going to identify the shroom as Amanita virosa, a.k.a. Destroying Angel. On the third day, the mushroom was nothing more than a black puddle of goo with a decaying stalk sticking up out of the ground. The weather has created a perfect mushroom situation. Oyster mushrooms are in abundance, I have seen them everywhere! But I won't eat them unless I have a pro-shroomer to confirm identification.
I read somewhere that brown fungi are "Toadstools", and white fungi are mushrooms. Who knows? I think everything with a caps, and stalks, are mushrooms. This fine speciment is growing very close to my compost pile. I don't have my shroom identification book right here, but I'm fairly certain that this mushroom is poisonous. I say that because it has a veil developing around the fringe of the cap, and a fringy ring around the stalk. I didn't want to pick the fungi just to identify it so, I will need to wait a bit longer to properly figure its true identification. One of the best ways to "I.D." a mushroom is by its spore print. Unfortunately to do a sporeprint, you have to remove the cap, destroying the mushroom. I'll take another picture when the mushroom has fully effloresced. At the moment this fungi is about 4" tall, with a thick meaty cap about 3-4" across.
