White Umbrella Mushroom (Macrolepiota excoriata)
Systematics:- Department: Basidiomycota (Basidiomycetes)
- Subdivision: Agaricomycotina (Agaricomycetes)
- Class: Agaricomycetes (Agaricomycetes)
- Subclass: Agaricomycetidae (Agaricomycetes)
- Order: Agaricales (Agaric or Lamellar)
- Family: Agaricaceae (Champignon)
- Genus: Macrolepiota (Macrolepiota)
- Species: Macrolepiota excoriata (Umbrella white)
- Other names for the mushroom:
- Umbrella meadow
- Field umbrella
Other names:
Field umbrella
Umbrella meadow
The cap is 6–12 cm in diameter, thick-fleshed, initially ovoid, elongated, opens up to flat-spread, with a large brown tubercle in the center. The surface is whitish or creamy, matte, the center is brown and smooth, the rest of the surface is covered with thin scales remaining from the rupture of the skin. Edge with white flaky fibers.
The flesh of the cap is white, with a pleasant smell and a slightly pungent taste, does not change on the cut. Longitudinally fibrous in the leg.
The leg is 6-12 cm high, 0.6-1.2 cm thick, cylindrical, hollow, with a small tuberous thickening at the base, sometimes curved. The surface of the leg is smooth, white, yellowish or brownish below the ring, slightly brownish from touch.
The plates are frequent, with smooth edges, free, with a thin cartilaginous colarium, easily detached from the cap, there are plates. Their color is white, in old mushrooms from cream to brownish.
The remains of the bedspread: the ring is white, wide, smooth, mobile; Volvo is missing.
Spore powder is white.
An edible mushroom with a pleasant taste and smell. It grows in forests, meadows and steppes from May to November, reaching especially large sizes on humus steppe soils. For abundant fruiting in meadows and steppes, it is sometimes called a meadow umbrella mushroom .
Similar species
Edible:
The variegated umbrella mushroom (Macrolepiota procera) is much larger in size.
Conrad's umbrella mushroom (Macrolepiota konradii) with a whitish or brown skin that does not completely cover the cap and cracks in a star-like manner.
Umbrella mushroom thin (Macrolepiota mastoidea) and Umbellate mushroom mastoidea (Macrolepiota mastoidea) with thinner cap flesh, the tubercle on the cap is more pointed.
Poisonous:
Poisonous Lepiota (Lepiota helveola) is a highly poisonous mushroom, usually much smaller (up to 6 cm). It also features a gray-pink skin of the cap and a pinkish flesh.
Inexperienced mushroom pickers may confuse this umbrella with the deadly poisonous stinking fly agaric, which is found only in forests, has a free volva at the base of the leg (it can be in the soil) and a white smooth cap, often covered with filmy flakes.