The Pleated Inkcap mushroom (Parasola plicatilis) is supposed to be a small mushroom, but I ran across some in a small peat pot that were almost microscopic. You can get some idea of how small these are by looking at the stem of the newly sprouted seedling behind these. The seedling is about 12 or 13 mm tall (about 1/2 inch), making these maybe a grand total of 3 or 4 mm high (about 1/8 of an inch).
They didn’t last very long – about an hour after I took this picture, they had wilted away and decomposed, looking very much like the strands of peat moss they popped up in. The Pleated Inkcap is one of many short-lived grassland fungi that appear after some rain, These develop, expand, shed their spores and decay within 24 hours – by the next day there is usually no evidence of them having existed.
At least, I think this was a Parasola plicatilis – there are many other very similar related mushrooms. To positively identify it, a microscopic examination of the spores would have been required, and I didn’t have one handy. As a family, these are saprobic, meaning that they are scavengers that live on decaying organic material.
The cap and stem that most people would identify as a “mushroom” is actually just the fruit or fruiting body – the reproductive structure of a larger fungal organism. The majority of the fungus exists, hidden away in the wood, soil, or other material the mushroom is growing on, as a web of fibers or filaments. This fibrous web, the mycelium, is the actual body of the fungus. Think of it like this: the part you see (the mushroom stem and cap) is like an apple – the mycelium hidden away underneath is like the apple tree that the apple grows on.
The photo was taken with a Canon 7D Mk II with a 100mm macro lens. Exposure was 1/125 of a second at ISO 1600 and F3.2.
