Thursdays Blue Ringer Surprise

[mjshroomer]

Whille on a visit to a friends house in Madrona, I road the bus up and looked out the window at a stop light and noticed some brown patches on a lawn of a private home. So I got off the bus at the next stop and walked back almost fourblocks and lo and behold, My 2nd find of Psilocybe stuntzii (blue ringers) for the year, the first pickings this year were posted on several sites in March of this year.

These were still pretty wet because the lawn sprinklers were going so I waited about 1/2 an hour until they clicked off and then another ten minutes. Soaked a nice new pair of pants on the knees with green stains and they probably will never leave after washing.

Here are three of about a dozen images I took. Should have brought a few home for prints but they were pretty wet and it would of taken severakl hours of sun to dry the caps enouugh for spores to fall because of the dampness.





Here are a few freshies which were below the grass height on the lawn.. Hidden in taller grass. I should mention that if certain lawn areas were allowed to let the grasses where these guys grow reach heights of 8 to 10 high or more than the blue ringers will also reach heights of 6-7 inches and cap sizes similar to large cyans and wavy as hell.

I pulled these out and laid them on my hand to shor their unique size from their protection afforded by the taller grass. When the mower comes, many ringers get their caps shreaded off and if one crawls around on the ground looking face down you would see stems with no caps but a blueness at the top edge of the stem where the cap had been mowed off so those stems are good if the grass is not wet. Usually landscappers avoid mowing when the lawns are wet. IT is not good to mow a wet lawn. I have seen master crops of ringers on lawns of large warehouses in the Tukkwilla industrielle area of Southcenter and looked down the sidewalk and saw the steven King lawnmower man coming down towards me so that I had to go beyond him to another lawn. That was a period in Seattles history when 70% of most new sodded lawns produced massive blue ringers.

So here is a smallhandfull.



By the way, the first patch of this species I found in Seattle was in 1973, on the 4th of July at around noon time. I was sitting on the lawn of the Seattle Art Museum in Volunteer Park smoking a doobie with my wife and our 6 month old son was in the buggy and I was playing my guitar thinking who can I get to take me out to a pasture in the fall to pick some liberty caps. My favorite shrooms and I have not had any since 2004. And I looked at the lawn and there they were, my first blue ringers. I thought that they were baby cubes because many had dried into the straw-yellow color caused by the hygrophanous color change from the brightness of the sun.

These guys are fresh, and a little damp. I wrapped them in my shirt gently to try to remove the moisture from the still damp grass caused by the sprinkler system.


mjshroomer

[SilvrHairDevil]

What an eye you have. Do they whistle at you as you pass by?

"Over here, MJ!! Over here!!"

[eastwood]

Great find MJ

Thanks for sharing the photos and the knowledge.

[Joukahainen]

Yes, very cool findings MJ!

[BuckarooBanzai]

Nice post, man. I love little bits and pieces of information about whats and wheres and what folks were thinking about when they find shrooms...

That second pic is gorgeous. Stuntzii's are already pretty, but the color of the caps is so much richer when they are wet. Makes me want to nibble on them even more!

[Subbalteatus]

Neat Find MJ! Funny how you spotted from the bus! Many times I have spotted mushies from a car or a distance. I remember seing a foot tall amanita allong the 5 going north towards Seattle while traveling 70mph.

I love the close ups on the Stuntzi's! I have never seen that mushroom in the wild, on lawns, or otherwise.

Peace,
Subbal.

[mjshroomer]

Originally Posted by Subbalteatus

Neat Find MJ! Funny how you spotted from the bus! Many times I have spotted mushies from a car or a distance. I remember seing a foot tall amanita allong the 5 going north towards Seattle while traveling 70mph.

I love the close ups on the Stuntzi's! I have never seen that mushroom in the wild, on lawns, or otherwise.

Peace,
Subbal.

Like P. fimetaria and P. baeocystis, it is a pasture mushroom, extremely rare in the wild but abundant in man made environments.

So is P. cyanescens. Very rare in the wild and abundant in a man made environment.

mjshroomer