Doesn't look like anything edible.. My old Polish grandmother used to be able to tell if a mushroom was poisonous by touching it to her tongue and noting the result.

Looks kinda like a yellow Amanita (e.g., one of the yellow forms of Amanita muscaria, fly agaric). Nifty.

Patrick Alexander

I don't think that's a variety of Amanita muscaria, though it may be some Amanita species...would need a closer look.

"Doesn't look like anything edible."

There is no edible or inedible "look" to a mushroom. There is simply no way to tell if a mushroom is edible without knowing precisely what mushroom it is. It is very dangerous to think that there is an edibility test that can be applied to unknown mushrooms...

I only mentioned that when my polish grandmother was out in the woods looking for and picking mushrooms, she used to test the mushroom on her tongue. Not sure what the results were, but she lived to be over 90 years old, and did this for many years.

There may have been a disagreeable mushroom in the region that looked like something edible that she normaly gathered, and tasting was the only way she could distinguish one from the other.

IMPORTANT: Amanita phalloides (Death Cap) has been reported to taste good (reported by individuals whose livers and kindneys later failed). There is certainly no all-purpose tasting method to determine if a mushroom is edible.

I agree, it was just a comment and an observation I had made. Without knowing more about mushrooms, especially in the wild, I would never going looking for them, or rely on a taste test no matter what the result was.

Hi there, I know nothing about mushrooms, apart from some of them taste good. However, I appear to have two small versions of the yellow mushroom above growing in my plant pot. I have recently moved the plant into a bigger pot and introduced some new compost, the plant spent a little while outside and is now back inside. The weather in the UK is hot at the moment 20-30 degrees.

Did anyone come to a difinitive answer as to what this mushroom is. I am keen to either keep it or be rid of it depending what the answer is. If I am going to keep it it may need a pot of it's own looking at the above photo!

Many thanks for any sound advise.

Michelle

Hi again, not to worry, I found it, details are below:

Leucocoprinus birnbaumii (Corda) Singer
Sydowia 15(1-6): 67. 1962.

Common Name: none

Synonyms: Lepiota lutea, Lepiota birnbaumii, Leucocoprinus luteus

Pileus
Cap 2.0-5.0 cm broad, obtuse-conic to bell-shaped, broadly conic in age, margin at first incurved, then decurved to plane, conspicuously striate; surface more or less smooth at the disc, elsewhere sqaumulose or matted tomentose; color bright yellow to fluorescent yellow, soon fading to dingy, pale yellow; flesh thin, soft, fragile, unchanging; odor: strongly of "mushrooms;" taste, mild.

Lamellae
Gills free, close, moderately broad, thin, fragile, pale yellowish, the edges slightly darker.

Stipe
Stipe 2.5-7.0 cm long, 2-6 mm thick, round, slender, hollow to stuffed at maturity, equal except for an often enlarged base; surface matted fibrillose, especially at the apex, obscurely so below, especially in age or after handling; color like the cap, soon fading to pale yellow; veil membranous, pubescent, forming a narrow, fragile, superior annulus.

Spores
Spores 7.5-11 x 6-7 microns, oval to broadly elliptical, smooth, thick-walled, dextrinoid, with an apical germ pore.

Habitat
Solitary, scattered to clustered on the soil of potted greenhouse plants; occasional outdoors in grass or well-decayed wood chips; fruiting year-round in greenhouses, restricted to late summer or early fall outdoors.

Edibility
Possibly poisonous, to be avoided.

Comments
This diminutive mushroom, typically found on the soil of potted indoor plants, is easily recognized by a bright-yellow (when fresh, it fades rapidly in the sun), finely-scaled, bell-shaped, striate cap, thin, collar-like annulus, and free, yellowish gills. A close relative is Leucoprinus cepaestipes which has a white, striate cap and fruits outdoors on well rotted wood chips or in grass under conifers.

Lol, don't pot them. Leave them as they are mostly great for good soil. And unless you have the experience / ability to actually look at those spores under the scope (or have training of some sorts) I would be wary of any classification.

My teen daughters have a very large potted begonia in their bedroom...2 of these popped up there in the last month! While beautiful, both girls had some real allergy pop up at the same time. We moved the big pot onto the front porch for some sun and dryness and their symptoms subsided! Could the spore as these opened cause such? Good to hear of what it may be..timely, as we were just going to look this one up!
Thanks.
Glad

Gladgrowing - mushroom spores are indeed often implicated as allergens, especially those of oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus spp.) which are produced in huge numbers. I love mushrooms but housing them in the same room as your children is probably a bad idea, at least if they are the kind of mushrooms that release airborne spores (there are some that don't).

Bobcat - you are right to be wary of identifications made without detailed examination of actual specimens. I have been studying mushrooms for many years and a large percentage of species are troublesome to pin down without a microscope (with which you would examine many features apart from spores) and also good references. There are however many species that are distinctive enough to be recognized from a good photograph or even a good description. Leucocoprinus bimbaurdii is one of these, having unique and striking morphological traits combined with a distinctive habitat. So one can be more confident than usual in the identifications made in this case.

"So one can be more confident than usual in the identifications made in this case."

I've been studying them for years too- I love them! And while I have no doubt you know as much or probably more than I do I must say the above quote is:

NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

Maybe for you or me or Rhizo1 or CACO and other proficient people here, but definitely not for the previous posters. As a general, open, and amateur mushroom forum such as this (99.9% of mush posts are "can you identify this?") that statement is at best dangerous. I am, in fact, in total agreement with you. But some other guy or gal might find a patch of meadow mushies with a few amanitas growing amonst them and say the exact same thing....

It is OUR responsibility to be overly cautious. (please don't think I am convetching at you! Just stating my opinion. Your posts are yours to do with as you please and I won't bother you!)

By "in this case" I was referring to the single specimen shown in that photo. But, more to the point, when I wrote of my relative confidence in *identification* I made a statement having absolutely nothing to do with *edibility*. That this species is probably poisonous has already been made clear in this thread. The kind of people who operate according to the logic "because my unidentified mushroom has now been relatively confidently assigned a species name it is therefore edible" - should perhaps themselves be assigned a Darwin Award.

Whether you made a statement towards edibility is irrelevant. What is relevant is people who post comments copied out of some field guide (yeah I know you did not do this) and just assume... Well, no need to spell that out. Then to be supported by your post... Your statement was dangerous. There is no reply to that. It is what it is. And if you think ANYONE needs the the Darwin Award (if I am interpreting your meaning correctly) then perhaps you should.... well, no need to spell that one out either...

And what, exactly, if you don't mind my testing, would one *need* with a scope other than spore examination?

There are many groups of closely related mushrooms which are not conveniently separable into individual species on the basis of spore characteristics alone, having as they do spores of very similar dimensions, ornamentation etc. Thus, thorough identifications make use of other microscopic features such as pleurocystidia, cheilocystidia and the hyphal structures of the cap, gills and stem (referred to in the literature as pileus, lamellae and stipe) as well as any specialized structures on these parts. Usually it is a combination of features that characterizes a species at a microscopic level and spore morphology is sometimes not the most distinctive of these.

I'm still failing to follow the reasoning behind your condemnation of my previous post, but as you assure me there is no possible reply to what you have said, I won't let it bother me.

So how do you alleviate this mushroom from planters, etc? As it is growing in indoor planters, my concern is for possible allergic reactions.

east, removal of the fruiting body within your containers is as simple as plucking it and tossing it in the garbage. However, true fungal organism will continue to flourish with the potting medium where it is happily established. That organism is working hard to decompose the organic matter in your potting mix ( not necessarily a GOOD thing for containers), and will periodically set up more fruiting bodies (mushrooms) as conditions prompt it to do so.

If you wish to rid yourself of the whole thing, you will have to carefully repot using fresh potting mix from a new, unopened bag. Even that won't guarantee that you will be mushroom free, as this little yellow 'houseplant mushroom' seems to be ubiquitous. I guess it proves that packaged potting soil really isn't sterile, as they would have you believe. ;-)

Personally, I would remove the mushroom and not worry about it until it was time to repot my plants.

Well, I don't know diddly about what kind of shroom this might be, but I get yellow mushrooms in my potted plants that look very much like this one when I use cornmeal to enrich my compost. These little guys seem to pop right out of the little clumps of damp cornmeal, which I think would account in some part for the color. I don't know what a scientist might call them, but I call them corn-shrooms, scoop them out with a large spoon and toss them back into the compost heap. Just my 2 cents worth, so to all you authoritative mushroom afficianados, please carry on with your detailed and technical discussion now. Cheryl

LOL! Very cute, Cheryl. Corn-shrooms. By the way, mushrooms don't absorb colors from their food. BoyOBoy, THAT would sure make it impossible to identify species!

"I'm still failing to follow the reasoning behind your condemnation of my previous post, but as you assure me there is no possible reply to what you have said, I won't let it bother me."

Really? You seem smart though (unless you just googled your answer). Oh well.

Well, I got this little ubiquitous mushroom myself, and took pictures of it as it developed and died. It was fascinating to watch and I was not stupid enough to eat it. But, I think it is a shame that it doesn't have a common name. What do I tell my 10 yr old?: it's a Lepiota lutea, Lepiota birnbaumii, Leucocoprinus luteus? Gad! Amidst this technical struggle couldn't we simply give it a common name? Lampshade mushroom? It's like a pretty little glowing light. And if your worried about your (insulting) Darwin award people, call it deadly lampshade. Jeez. Serious shroom people..Yet, Understandable. and, yes they are fascinating. (but its a bit tedious to the layman when you are arguing over your posts with each other, couldn't you PM instead of haggling over intellectual territory online in a thread where we just want to know what the heck it is?)

A lemon yellow, delicate, fragile looking mushroom popped up on a potted plant I keep outside on the patio. I found your website when I searched "Yellow Mushroom". I had never seen a yellow mushroom before. Needless to say, it had been cloudy and raining for days. It took the mushroom 3 days to go through its cycle. It grew out rapidly. By the third day early in the morning before the sun popped out the mushroom was wide open like a plate on a spindle like a petticoat on the edges. Regrettably I did not photographed in the morning until the afternoon. By the afternoon its appearances had changed to what you are seeing now on the pictures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRaiL4mOuPA
Yellow Mushrooms,
Here's a video I made after finding these Lepiota lutea, Lepiota birnbaumii, Leucocoprinus luteus or Deadly Lantern mushrooms growing in my legal medicinal marijuana garden. I'm going to look at them as proof that my soil is organic. In the video I removed three clumps and reset the 1 sq meter growbed. Now there are dozens of little yellow buddies up and down the rows of pot plants, I smelled mushrooms the day before they were visible. I'm going to take Seamom Cheryl's advise and scoop-em up and throw-em out before they flower spores everywhere. If they aren't dangerous to the plant, what good are they? That is my question of the day..
Peace,
jef Tek

Here is a link that might be useful: JefTekGrowcam on youTube

Here's another pic for IDing if anyone needs it. This little bugger is growing under my quince bush in a shade garden (we've had a lot of rain the past few days). Glad to hear it's not terribly poisonous, so I guess I'll just yank it out. We already have enough mushrooms because of all the buried tree stumps in the yard!

{{gwi:604161}}
crazy yellow mushroom

jennahw, that last one looks like Coprinus comatus.
Vincent

I had one of these mushrooms grow in a potted plant. There are several more sprouting. Does any one know if they're harmful to pets? They're interesting to watch through the "blossoming" cycle.

Thanks,
Jeannine