Sometime back in the ’80s, I was on my first mushroom photography trip to the Appalachians. It was a hot and sticky day in North Carolina, and I found a beautiful pair of white mushrooms growing out of a small stump. These were special because they each came out of a large cup at the base but were clearly not Amanitas, which don’t grow on wood.
Unfortunately, they were situated next to an inside hairpin turn on a busy mountain road. I admired them for a few moments, while I tried to avoid getting hit by passing cars. I thought “there’s got to be more of them around” so I left without a photograph. That was twenty years ago and I haven’t seen that species since-until last week.
I was visiting a friend’s cattle ranch looking for those “funny mushrooms” (for photos only, thank you). Just as the sky was threatening to dump a Florida summer rain, I caught a glimpse of the mushroom “that got away” twenty years before. It was twelve feet up a small, dead tree and I hurried home to get my eight-foot ladder. When I returned, I caught this white treasure, Volvariella bombycina, in full glory.