THE BOSTON MYCOLOGICAL CLUB Sighting: Chlorophyllum molybdites Cambridge, MA

On the way to work, one day in early September, a BMC member walked by a lovely patch of mushrooms growing in the mixed lawn/mulch in front of Cambridge Electric. They looked like some sort of Lepiota, so he picked some and brought them on into work. There would be a moment during the day to look at them closer with the field guides in the office (don't you keep field guides in the office?!). He showed them to another BMC person at work and they talked and agreed that it looked like Lepiota rachodes. Here's a photo of the cap of an older one and a photo of the underside of a younger one.

In the interest of collecting spore prints, and expecting to get a nice white one - the stem was cut off one, a piece of paper from the copier was laid down on a table in the hallway and the cap was left to rest while meetings were attended and real work was done. Upon checking later, the paper looked like this:

Wow! This is definitely not a white spore print! In fact, despite the rendition of the scanner and your computer screen, it had a decidedly green cast to it. (The greenish color has faded somewhat as the spore print has "aged") This is Chlorophyllum molybdites!

In fact, look at those gills! See the greenish color to them!