Macroplepiota, Home

We've had a little bit of blessed rain recently, and while it's not enough to nudge us out of the Severe drought category on the US Drought Monitor map—maybe the precipitation in the forecast for the next few days will push us in that direction—the moisture has been sufficient to bring a crop of mushrooms out of the ground. I spotted this one on a trek to Babcock Ridge and I actually knew it right away. Praise be... a few memory cells are still working. This is a member of the Lepiota mushroom group, or, what I thought was a Lepiota. In common terms, it's called a Parasol Mushroom, but when I got home and looked it up, I discovered that, no surprise here, the DNA analysts have been wreaking havoc on the genus. According to Michael Kuo, who runs the authoritative site mushroomexpert.com, "Today's Lepiota is not your grandmother's Lepiota." Indeed, it is now probably more scientifically correct to call mushrooms that look like the old species lepiotoid... and leave it at that. Still, a parasol is a parasol, and at least the common name remains intact.