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White agaric in grass
Unidentified agaric Uncertain
Angles captured. One cap from directly above with a second fruitbody visible behind it, one standing profile, and one low oblique showing the gills.
Morphology
At least two fruitbodies. Cap 7–8 cm, pure chalk-white, smooth, dry, expanding to plane with a low broad umbo and a slightly wavy, faintly lobed margin. Gills white, close, appearing free or nearly so. Stipe white, 8–10 cm, smooth, of even thickness. In the profile frame the fruitbody has toppled and the stipe base is exposed — and shows no sac-like volva and no cup. No ring is visible on any frame.
Habitat & substrate
Tall grass and mixed litter at a sunny woodland edge. Two fruitbodies a short distance apart.
Lookalikes & what rules them out
With neither a ring nor a volva confirmed, three genera stay open: Amanita (a volva can be left behind in the soil when a fruitbody is pulled or knocked over), Leucoagaricus leucothites — the white dapperling, which is white with free gills, has a ring and no volva, and characteristically fruits in grass — and Volvopluteus, which has a volva and no ring but whose gills turn pink with age.
To confirm this identification
A spore print separates all three at once: white for Amanita and Leucoagaricus, pink for Volvopluteus. Then dig the base out intact and check the upper stipe for a ring.
Notes
Substantially revised on second pass. This entry originally called Amanita at moderate confidence, on the reasoning that frame #4088 showed an unopened egg-stage fruitbody. At full resolution #4088 is not an egg — it is a mature cap seen from above, with a second fruitbody behind it. That removes the main evidence for Amanita, so the entry drops to genus-uncertain. The safety advice is unchanged, and if anything matters more now. Amanita has not been excluded, and eastern North America's pure-white species include A. bisporigera and A. virosa, the destroying angels — among the most lethal mushrooms in the world. Treat any all-white gilled mushroom as deadly until a spore print and an intact stipe base say otherwise.
Found at Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary, Worcester, MA on Saturday, 1 August 2026 at 19:45. See the full walk for that day's weather and everything else recorded.
Others in this group
Earthballs in leaf litterScleroderma sp. · Oct 11Moderate
Weathered / grazed fruitbodies on an eroded bankcf. Russula · Jul 31Low
Pink-tan capped agaricUnidentified agaric · Jul 31Low
White-capped agaric in litterUnidentified agaric · Jul 31Low
White cap in leaf litterUnidentified agaric · Jul 31Low
Puffball in grassLycoperdon or Calvatia · Jul 31Moderate–high
Fly agaric buttonAmanita muscaria var. guessowii · Aug 1High
White mycelium in leaf litterMycelium · Aug 6