Originally Posted by

In article , wrote:
Nick has gone mushroom hunting in the grass outside the front of the
house. This is a photo of the bowl he picked:
http://comps.org/vicky/mushrooms/IMAG1393.jpg

They are white, yellow markings where damaged or apparently sunburnt.
The gills are pink. They seem to be growing in a big circle, on grass,
with no bits below the soil level

There are also lots of other types, including some huge flat ones with
dark gills, which I thought were mature versions of this one, but they
do appear to be different.

We're /fairly/ sure they're safe, as one of our neighbours eats them!
But mushrooms still scare me when they're not from the supermarket. :-(

Any thoughts?

Well, I wouldn't eat all of them, though I would probably eat
most of them.

They are almost certainly Agaricus/Psalliota (i.e. common
mushrooms), but one of the key rules of picking those is
not to pick them until they have started to open and their
gills are a very definite pinkish brown. The chances of
including an Amanita are very low, but the cost of doing
so is vast. And, yes, you CAN get a single Amanita growing
amoung a mass of Agaricus.

The huge flat ones with dark gills are almost certainly mature
versions of this - that is exactly how they develop. I would
have no hesitation in eating the ones that meet the safe
rule for Agaricus, which would include most of those and the
huge flat ones. But I would perform the check list first!


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.