Shaggy Mane
The shaggy mane, or lawyer's wig, is one of the most familiar lawn and roadside mushrooms in North America — a tall white cylindrical to bell-shaped cap covered in shaggy, upturned scales, on a slender stem. Its most striking trait is self-digestion: within a day the gills and cap dissolve from the rim upward into a black, inky liquid, so specimens are white and fresh only very briefly. It is a decomposer of rich, disturbed soil and appears on lawns, mulch beds, and compost.
It is one of the more distinctive lawn mushrooms, but the same grassy habitat produces a far more troublesome one: the green-spored parasol, the most common cause of mushroom poisoning in North America. The shaggy mane is tall and cylindrical with shaggy scales and a black-inking cap; the green-spored parasol is broader and umbrella-shaped, does not dissolve into ink, and drops a green spore print. Any dissolving-into-ink cap is a shaggy mane; any broad dry parasol with a greenish gill tint is not.
Breaks down organic matter in lawns, compost, and mulch, releasing nutrients into disturbed and enriched soils. A harmless and useful garden decomposer.
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