What kind of Mushroom is this growing in my yard?

It looks like a young Death Cap and if it isn't I would have no trouble convincing myself that it is.

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When I was a kid I used to pick mushrooms and puffballs with my father but I wouldn't have the confidence in myself to do it today.
 
My mother taught me to pick wild mushrooms and how to identify the good ones.

We only picked two kinds.

What she taught me was to break it open and smell it. That smell never leaves you .mushrooms2.jpg

These are the best type for cooking when still small. We used to call them button heads. The real name is honey agaric. Usually at the base of trees.

Wild mushrooms have a much stronger taste than the domestic variety and they used pop out in the same place, year after year. If you find a good spot, don't pick them. Cut them so that the spawn stays in place for repeated harvests.
 
There are no gills on the underside so I doubt it is a mushroom and I seriously doubt it is edible
Be really careful because unless you know what it is best to treat it as poisonous
I think if you let that one grow it will be a puffball. They get filled with dark spores and it breaks open and spreads them in the wind.

The poster did say dark chocolate stuff coming out, that's why I think it's a puffball.
 
Puffball, brings to mind the time we tore down the old goat barn, back in the late 40s. A huge pile of hay, goat poop, chicken poop and cow poop from years ago, had accumulated. In removing it, there was a huge puffball, about the size of a basketball, in the middle of the pile. Grandpa cleaned it up and had quite a few meals with it. Me...nope, no way.
 
I remember when I was a child and the neighbor girl would come to play and we would inadvertently find these horrible smelling mushrooms with a dark greenish goop on them. That smell was so hideous. We finally quit playing in the back yard the day one of us fell out of the tree onto the goop. :sick:
 
I took a class once on wild edible mushrooms. The instructor took us up into the woods and pointed out the ones we could and could not eat. It's been a long time. I don't take chances on any of them these days.
 
Thanks for the link. That mushroom shows up as a puffball.

Yes, it looks like a puffball to me although in the first pik it looks deformed. (I have one growing in my front yard right now.) Any I've ever seen were round like a ball.

I'm waiting another day for the one in my yard then I'll pick it. I slice them and fry in butter, add salt and pepper. Been eating them since I was a kid although they are very rare to find -- maybe I find one every 5-10 years.

If you let them sit too long (and it happens quickly) they turn into dust and are inedible.
 

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