Home / Gilled mushrooms on wood / TM0171
Honey mushroom cluster, young and mature
Armillaria sp. (mellea group) Genus
Angles captured. Eight field frames, five bench frames pairing a young and a mature fruitbody, and the spore prints of both on black card — chosen because a white print vanishes on white.
Morphology
Honey-yellow caps 2–6 cm in a dense cluster that lifted from the ground as one piece — the stipes fused at a common base on buried woody material. Young cap with the partial veil still stretched to the stipe; mature cap with the veil collapsed into a membranous ring with a yellow-edged margin. Gills cream, slightly decurrent. Spore prints white, dense, from both ages.
Habitat & substrate
Pine-needle ground at the trail edge, fruiting from buried wood or roots — the cluster came up attached to woody fragments.
Lookalikes & what rules them out
Every recorded character is Armillaria: caespitose growth from a common base, a true membranous ring — the yellow-margined ring is specifically an A. mellea-group mark — cream gills with a decurrent tooth, and a white print. The ringless honey mushroom is excluded by the ring itself; Pholiota and Gymnopilus print brown to rust, not white.
To confirm this identification
For the species complex: black bootlace rhizomorphs on the buried wood would be worth one photograph, and the host tree matters. The genus is settled.
Notes
The veil-to-ring pair was photographed by design — a young and a mature fruitbody from one cluster, showing the partial veil becoming the ring. Documented across two print cards, both labelled to their field frames.
Found at Walker Pond Rd area, Sturbridge, MA on Thursday, 20 August 2026 at 12:47. See the full walk for that day's weather and everything else recorded.
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Troop of small pale agarics on a logUnidentified agaric · Aug 6Low
Striate-capped agaric on woodUnidentified agaric · Aug 6Low
Orange-gilled bracket on a logTapinella or Phyllotopsis · Aug 6Moderate
Small orange mushrooms on a rotting logUnidentified small orange agaric · Aug 6Low
Small orange mushroom on a log — upperUnidentified small orange agaric · Aug 6Low
Small orange mushroom on a log — lowerUnidentified small orange agaric · Aug 6Low
White cap on a mossy logUnidentified agaric · Aug 6Low