Fungi, whatsit?

#1 It is growing out of a very short cherry log. The only known mushroom that I tried to grow is shiake. Those presumably failed logs are at the bottom of this stack.

#2  I think wood chips have been applied to all affected areas of the garden in the last couple of years. Though several beds have been since cardboarded with pine needles or leaves placed on top. The mushrooms may be frost damaged.









Here they are drying out after a second frosty night.

Hmmmmm, #1 has a very interesting "gill" structure, but I have no clue what it could be.

However, #2 looks like it might possibly be in the Agrocybe praecox complex, an extremely common bunch of wood chip-loving mushrooms that typically appear in spring. This group is a taxonomic mess and it seems like nobody has sampled enough DNA to sort them all out yet. There is quite a bit of variation in this group, but the spore print should be brown. If not, you probably have something else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrocybe_praecox

https://www.mushroomexpert.com/agrocybe_praecox.html

See if your mushrooms match the descriptions and if they have a brown spore print.

By the way, these mushrooms smell awful to me and probably taste awful, although I wouldn't want to sample them!

Yeah, that's probably it. I guess I won't be sampling it though. We have enough bitter greens in the spring to help get our liver back in shape. No need to munch on a maybe ID'd mushroom.

The mushrooms in the first post (OP) are Spring Polypores (Lentinus arcularius).