Mushrooms In My Yard

Mushrooms In My Yard. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

During the spring and fall seasons you might be surprised to find a plethora of mushrooms growing in your yard or on your property. Mushrooms are fairly common but knowing whether or you can pick and eat them is a whole different story. My wife and I recently found some very large mushrooms growing in our backyard under some pine trees. An internet search and a trip to the bookstore only led us to more questions. Lori Carris is an associate professor and mycologist with Washington State University took some time to look over some photos I had taken of my mystery mushrooms.

CARRIS: This is a really good example of a mushroom where yes, this one is probably edible but you still need to know the key characteristics and there are species - I mentioned this species Amanita that contains the deadly ones, this group of mushrooms shares some of the same features with Amanita.

Carris finally identified mine as an edible Agaricus arvensis more commonly known as a Horse mushroom. But even with an edible mushroom Carris gives a caution.

CARRIS: Most of what we know about mushroom toxicity comes from trial and error. People eating something and getting sick. So there’s about 2000 mushrooms around the world that are probably edible and of that there’s really only a handful, maybe 15 to 30 that people pick widely because they’;re considered good edibles.

Even with a good book there are many variations in mushrooms to watch out for and Carris recommends finding someone locally that knows mushrooms.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.