These Lepiota rhacoides - Shaggy Parasol mushrooms did grow in our garden after some rain in July and early August.
When the Lepiota species are growing, its scales on the cap are the result of its cap expansion causing the surface tissue to crack.
As Pieter always used to say if he got questioned about a certain species being edible or not:
'You can eat them ALL - some of them only once...'
Therefore we never take the risk as they often look alike and they can easily be mistaken for the wrong ones. Annually there are quite a number of death because of this.
Our advice is to buy them and only eat the commercially grown varieties.
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- On September 7 of 2004, Hurricane Francis did 'visit' us briefly... and things never looked the same in our garden.
- Our triple stem River Birch got severely damaged and had to be cut down. Sad to see them go down that way by brutal force!
- This photo is taken from our balcony, before Francis did strike us...
- The sky looks 'pregnant' (zwangere lucht) and the water is about to break.
- There goes our 13 year old river birch with its unusual triple stem.
- Deadly wounded so Pieter had to put it out of its misery...
- What a green grass we had then! Now it is all dead, like in winter time.
Related link:
{Our Damage from Tornado spin off of Hurricane Earl, 2003} | previous post by me
Pieter did find this huge butterfly 'part' and it seemed it has had an 'out of body experienc'... Probably something quite nasty has happened and it might have been eaten by something?! Does anyone have an idea about this? Would love to know. By the way, this is a Giant Swallowtail -Papilio cresphontes Cramer, 1777 Butterfly, one of the two largest butterflies in the USA. It's span measured 14 cm or 5½".
Underside...
What could have happened to this beautiful butterfly...?
Once it also looked like this...
Related link:
