Is there a website which identifies mushrooms?

[Owlinthedark]

I used peat free compost in my raised beds and for the first time these mushrooms have sprouted. We normally get smaller ones on the lawn.

They look like field mushrooms and I’d love to forage them but I am well aware that mushrooms can be toxic. Is there a mushroom identifier website that I can be pointed towards?

Here are some photos.

Please don't eat foraged mushrooms unless you're an expert. The only place you should forage for mushrooms is Asda.

Picture mushroom is a great app but I def def wouldn't rely on it to decide whether something is edible. Google what happened to Nicholas Evans (the author)

😂the wild aisle

I found these today. I'm going to get my mushroom book out and see if I can ID them, but the 2 on the left are definitely milkcaps.

This could be it - I bought a lot of mycorrhizal granules when I was planting out seedlings so as they both begin with mycorr… I have cultivated mushrooms.

Having read the terrible story of the horse whisperer guy who poisoned himself and his family by mistake confusing edible mushrooms with poisonous ones i would not risk it.

He and his wife ended up on kidney dialysis for a number of years before getting organ transplant

They both believed they would die and leave their children (who luckily had not eaten any) orphaned.

Have you tried searching with Google lens?

That’s not guaranteed with flowering plants but is a seriously bad idea with fungi where you usually need several different views for an id.

@TerfranosaurusVagina Those on the left are very clearly milkcaps, aren’t they! The one at the top is an easy id. Good luck with the rest - I can sometimes sit for an hour with the book and not even be certain of genus. I see you’ve got a bit of leaf and substrate with each of them - that’s a really good idea!

@MereDintofPandiculation yes, though I couldn't identify which milkcap they were. They definitely weren't any of the edible ones and the milk was like radishes on crack. 😝
I think the right hand side ones were fibrecaps but again no positive ID and the one at the top is a grey saddle! Utter novice on mushrooms so I'm very chuffed I actually managed to identify one.

Make a spore print. It's fun. Remove the stalk and put the cap, gills down (or pores) on a piece of paper, leave it overnight. When you remove the cap in the morning the spores that have been shed should have left a pattern. The colour of the spore print can be useful to I.d. the species. Kids can find this interesting though mine could never be arsed but I still enjoy doing it.

I was running a fungus foray yesterday, and one of the books produced from the library of the organisation I was running it for was this one. I think you don’t need to feel bad about not getting it to species

😂good grief! It must have been on of the 50 species which wasnt mentioned in my book!

That’s the trouble with mycology (and with botany) - the more you learn, the more you find there is still to learn. You start with one book, then realise you need a bigger and better book and a whole new vocabulary, then you find you need a book for each separate group - for example this guide to the 239 species of British dandelion

@MereDintofPandiculation that's ridiculous! I never even knew there WERE species of dandelion!!
I'm trying to decide whether this is a parasol or a freckled dapperling. I'm thinking its shape is more like a young dapperling, but it has a strong, pleasant mushroomy smell and I thought dapperlings were supposed to smell unpleasant. Its dried out a bit now but the stem is hollow, and do you think thats snakeskin markings at the base of the stem? I couldn't see any spore print overnight so I'm assuming its white. Its got a partial veil and no volva that I could see. It was picked from my lawn, a few meters away from a large silver birch.

There is a fantastic group on fb called

Mushroom foraging United Kingdom

Such a great wealth of information and I've learnt so much.

Even found some porcini this year!

Place marking.

My cleaner is polish and loves my woodland garden. She’s taught me so much about mushrooms and gets very excited when we find porcini. I can now safely identify quite a few but I still just collect them with her and hand them over to her to eat. I’m too chicken to do it!

I also recommend a foraging course and around now is a good time of year to do it, but if anything, I was more wary of identification afterwards. There's something of a spectrum: never, never eat; can be eaten but don't taste nice so not worth picking; good to eat.

Many of the ones that look quite chunky and appetising are in categories 1 and 2. Ones that were identified and picked (then eaten cooked later) were small, spindly, and purple! Would I have thought they were category 3? Not at all. And not to be mistaken for their slightly pinker but otherwise very similar relatives - a category 2.

@TerfranosaurusVagina Can’t really tell from that photo, sorry, focus not good enough. Doesn’t have the jizz of a parasol. Otoh stipe looks too long and slender for Lepiota (dapperling).

Habitat is important to fungi, right down to whether it’s growing under birch or pine.

Sorry, ignore the comment about focus, it’s just the preview that appears out of focus. Yes, it’s a bit dry for id. Tip I learned the other day, from a painter of fungi rather than a mycologist - they keep better in a plastic box with a tight lid, with a damp tissue inside, in the fridge.

incidentally, you would see a white spore print, as texture on your white paper. I’m not very good at getting spore prints, they seem to need the right balance of moisture.

@MereDintofPandiculation thanks for the tip I'll try that next time! It'll remain yet another mystery mushroom then haha.

We went on a fungi walk today - the chap running it said he had about 70 books and still knew 'nothing' . I think he said there are about 15 thousand species of fungus in the U.K. (though not all will be mushroom-like). I think we saw about 50 different types, he couldn't ID quite all of them on the spot, some needed to be looked at under a microscope or have chemical treatment to tell exactly what they were.