365 Urban Species. #099: Conocybe tenera
Urban species #099: Concybe tenera
Mushroom season in New England starts in late summer. If you see a mushroom (not a bracket, or a jelly fungus) in the region this time of year it's pretty unusual. In the case of these Conocybe tenera, they were growing indoors. This species*, unlike the most of other fungi covered in this journal to date, does not grow on dead wood. The mycelium (the threadlike, non-reproductive part of the fungi, that eats and grows) lives in very rich soil, and the fruiting bodies (mushrooms) are usually encountered in lawns. The composted soil of this hothouse lettuce was a perfectly hospitable substitute.
This is one of many kinds of mushrooms that isn't easy to positively identifiable. It isn't thought to be especially poisonous or edible (there are conflicting reports) but is easy to confuse with mushrooms that definitely are poisonous, as well as those mushrooms eaten for recreational reasons. In order to make a mushroom identification, shape, color, spore color, habitat and other aspects have to be considered. For this identification, each physical feature matched, and in the "habitat" section for C. tenera in David Arora's Demystifying Mushrooms, trays full of lettuce seedlings are specifically mentioned. I still wouldn't eat them.
* Conocybe tenera has been split into several species, and is now recognized as a complex of similar related species.