Domicile Cup Fungus
Order Pezizales, Family Pezizaceae
FRUITING BODY: GOBLET-SHAPED, BECOMING IRREGULARLY FLAT AND WAVY
Entire mushroom: 2-10 cm or more wide; vaguely cup-shaped with central depression, becoming flat and wavy; upper surface whitish or brownish, darkening with age; underside lighter; whitish 1 cm long stalk sometimes present when young; slow growing
USUALLY INDOORS, INSIDE THE HOUSE! ON CARPET, SAND, CEMENT, PLASTER
EDIBILITY UNKNOWN
Lookalikes:
P. vesiculosa -- on manured soil
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If you are one of those people who has a hard time making it out the door of your house, you can hunt for the domicile cup fungus in the house.
First try carpet that occasionally gets wet. (In one office where we worked, a good crop grew on shag rug next to a toilet that leaked periodically. See photo.) Then check any aging pillows. (A woman once called us in a panic because she had "mushrooms on her cushions.") Don't forget to scour the entire basement, including the plaster walls, fireplace ashes, piles of junk, everything. (Another woman told us she woke up and, to her extreme terror, found fungus on her basement floor. She went to work hoping they’d disappear but really thinking they’d have taken over her entire house by the time she got home, like you might see in a horror movie. So she called her boyfriend from work, and he scraped them off her wet floor and repaired the a faucet that had been leaking since who-knows-how-long and had soaked the boards under her basement floor.)
