Shaggy Parasol day 2

Above, you can clearly see the double layered ring on the stem of this young Shaggy Parasol

 The Shaggy Parasol, Chlorophyllum rhacodes, in Norwood Grove, although still not fully grown,  looks even closer to its textbook description today:
"The "Shaggy Parasol" is an impressive mushroom, characterized by its large size, its shaggy and scaly cap", with "thick brown scales and protuberances on its fleshy white cap. The gills and spore print are both white in colour. Its stipe is slender, but bulbous at the base, is coloured uniformly and bears no patterns. It is fleshy, and a reddish, or maroon discoloration occurs and a pungent odour is evolved when it is cut. The egg-shaped caps become wider and flatter as they mature."

Shaggy parasols are agaric, which doesn't mean they are scary and will make you go Viking berserk if you eat them, the term describes a "saprotrophic basidiomycetous fungus of the family Agaricaceae, having gills on the underside of the cap."  Saprotrophic means living on dead matter.

Basidiomycetes include "mushrooms, puffballs, stinkhorns, bracket fungi, other polypores, jelly fungi, boletes, chanterelles, earth stars, smuts, bunts, rusts, mirror yeasts" and, quite scarily, "the human pathogenic yeast Cryptococcus". 

I love all of Ernst Haeckel's nature drawings, including his 1904 image of Basidiomycetes, below:

Today's Shaggy Parasol didn't smell particularly sweet as one fungi book said it would, but it did have an appetising mushroom odour, some people do seem to eat them but they have risks, and need to be cooked properly. First Time Foragers suggest cooking them without the stem:

"the closed young caps especially make ideal vessels for the stuffing and grilling/baking treatment. Or, you could tear the caps up into finger-food sized nuggets, coat in breadcrumbs or batter and deep fry "  

Below, how it looked yesterday:

Shaggy parasols typically grow "in troops or fairy rings in disturbed ground areas like roadsides, gardens, the edges of fields, and so on--often in the vicinity of conifers" (MushroomExpert.com).There were some others near this one but they looked nibbled and trampled, there were also some browner fungi nearby but they also looked too damaged to identify, they weren't Shaggy Parasols, but large LBJs (little brown jobs).

In relation to the Shaggy Parasol, First Time Foragers further clarify its identification with this:

"This mushroom has gills under the cap (some have tubes or spines) like those you find on the cultivated mushrooms that you buy at the supermarket. These, along with all of the mushroom’s flesh, turn a muddy red when bruised. This is an excellent feature to help determine identification: if the Shaggy Parasol you have picked does not bruise red then it is definitely something else and you must discard it. The stem is smooth, cream-coloured and also bruising red, and becoming very bulbous at the base. Shaggy Parasols with open caps leave a ring around the stem. This is double layered and can be moved, though may be a bit sticky, up and down the stem."

First Time Foragers: http://jpwaldron.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/the-shaggy-parasol/

MushroomExpert.Com:http://www.mushroomexpert.com/

Day 3: no sign of the Shaggy Parasol , it must have blown away in the overnight storm.