Mushrooms in a houseplant
Mushrooms in a houseplant are most often yellow flowerpot parasols that came with the potting soil and do the plant no harm. They are hitchhikers, like much of what comes bundled with the things we choose.
What it may mean
A bright yellow mushroom popping up in a pothos planter looks like trouble and almost never is. The common culprit, the yellow houseplant mushroom, rides into homes in bagged potting soil (or, now and then, as spores on a visitor's sleeve) and feeds on decaying bits of bark and root without hurting the plant. When the soil stays warm and damp for a while, it sends up pale yellow caps overnight, as if it had just moved in, though it came with the soil months ago. A lot of life arrives bundled like that. A new job comes with coworkers you did not pick, a partner with a whole family, an apartment with the neighbors through the wall. Some of those extras turn out to be the best part of the deal. The mushroom among the leaves is a small, sunny hitchhiker.
Depending on how you saw it
Mushrooms on the day you leave on a trip
In Burma, a 1903 encyclopedia says, coming across mushrooms at the beginning of a journey was a most fortunate omen. Spotting a crop of yellow caps in a planter while you pack has a cheerful ring to it. What small good sign would you most like to find on the morning you set out somewhere new?
Pulling them out and finding more
Picking off the caps does little, because the fungus lives as fine threads all through the soil and fruits again when conditions suit it. Drier soil makes the caps rarer. Which problem have you been picking off at the surface while its roots stay put?
Overnight caps
Houseplant mushrooms can push up and open between one morning and the next, then collapse soon after. Daniels and Stevans read mushrooms springing up in the night as a forecast of rain. Which brief, odd visitor in your house would you be sorry to see go?
Why it happens in nature
The yellow mushrooms found in houseplants are most often Leucocoprinus birnbaumii, called the flowerpot parasol or yellow houseplant mushroom. It spreads in potting soil and lives on dead organic matter, so it does not harm the plant, and its caps appear when soil and air stay warm and moist. Like many wild mushrooms, it is toxic if eaten.
What folk beliefs say
Burma (Myanmar)
If a Burman comes across mushrooms at the beginning of a journey, a 1903 collection says, he considers it a most fortunate omen.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 800. View the page
Bohemia
In Bohemia, it was said that many mushrooms are a sign of a bad harvest.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 800. View the page
To reflect on
Which choice of yours came as a package deal, and which extra turned out to be the best part?