The Mushroom in the Basement

A couple of months ago, we had some very hard rains in the region.  Thanks to our landlord’s laissez-faire approach to building maintenance, our basement flooded.  Well, flood is a rather strong word. Water seeped in through the basement walls from the saturated ground outside. At the height of the “flood”, the deepest water was less than an inch.  Perhaps 80% of the concrete floor was dampened as well as 60% of the walls. It was far from a crisis, but certainly an inconvenience.

The only way we have to ventilate the basement is by leaving the kitchen door open. Unfortunately, Mr. Kittenpuss takes this as an open invitation to play in the basement – not a good idea with standing “water” of unknown toxicity. So, we closed the door and waited for the floor drain & evaporation to do their thing. In a few days, the basement was back to its normal “slightly dampish” state.

One morning a week or two after the flood, I noticed an unusual small white blob where the stairs meet the concrete floor. I had a load of laundry to fold so I forgot about it for a few hours.  That afternoon, I noticed the blob had grown, but again, I was distracted by laundry & made a mental note to check it again later.

The next day, our blob had transformed in to a recognizable mushroom. It grew for a total of three days and finally reached a height of about 4 inches with a diameter of about 2 inches. On the fourth day, it quickly shriveled and disappeared.

We haven’t yet been able to determine what type of mushroom it was and there have been no further spotting of indoor flora. I find it amazing, and a tad frightening that a mushroom spore was able to find enough nutrients to support growth in some moist, crumbling concrete.  If anyone recognizes this particular species, I’m curious to learn more about it.