Mushrooming in Phoenix
I’m no mycophile (lover of fungi), but next time I hear about the mushroom club scheduling a mushroom hunt, I’m going to invite them into my neighborhood.
I should have taken pictures this past summer, because white mushrooms were growing wild here. I found them grouped together in my yard, sticking out of the cracks and crevices of my neighbor’s brick wall, and growing elsewhere. I don’t know if they were the edible kind; I don’t eat mushrooms and certainly didn’t try them. My dog didn’t even sniff at them. But I couldn’t get them to stop growing. I’d mow them down, weed whack them, and pull them out. But they grew right back, and they grew fast.
Now that the weather’s cooled down, they’ve stopped growing altogether. I can’t find them anywhere. Of course, I stopped watering my lawn regularly, and they obviously love moisture.
And it’s not like they were difficult to remove. I pulled them right out of the ground, stem and all. But they just grew right back and so fast, and they multiplied. It was a little creepy.
So when the Arizona Republic ran this article today about mushrooming and the mushroom clubs, I immediately thought of the ones growing in my backyard. They’re no longer there, so I’ll have to wait and see if they grow again next summer. This year was the first time I’d seen them, and I don’t know if that was an anomaly. But if they grow back again, I might call just out of curiosity.
If you’d like to get in on the fungi, the Arizona Mycota Project uses volunteers to help record unusual finds. I doubt mine were, but next year, I may just find out.
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