Coprinus comatus
Habitat and Substrate: Grows in soil and loves the roadsides and really disurbed areas, sides of tracks etc.
Description: Can get up to about 15cm tall and even taller. Starts out as a little shaggy white bud and slowly goes through the stages of a large cylindrical cap, still shaggy and then when it matures it turns up its margins and rolls them in. The gills become like a gooey black dripping ink, hence the common name of ‘ink cap’. I have seen these in the lower foot hills of Mount Wellington as well as on the roadsides around Mount Field and by the Lyell Highway on the way to Queenstown. Fantastic little decomposer!
