These struck me immediately as amanita. But alas I’m confused. Do all amanita have spots or other secondary characteristics like vellums? Or is the media merely saturated with these ~~strains~~ species?
In a redwood forest. It could be any number of species.
IDd by Richard Tehan. Further collection, documentation and ID pending. All growing from soil and immediately adjacent to wood. Extremely difficult to excavate the host, the first three broke against the wood, seemly indicating that the host was in or under the wood.
Growing from underside of dead hardwood log. Good chance this is Cornus florida as there are many downed C.f in this area. Specimens are fragile. Brown spores. Microscopy is at 100x and mounted in distilled water. Scale is 1 div=1 μm. 4 spored basidia viewed.