Dried Fairy Ring Mushrooms

There are only a few great springtime mushrooms, and the Fairy Ring Mushrooms is one of them. They are small but very tasty.

Its cap is 3/8 inch to 1 5/8 inches across, bell-shaped to convex, beige, with a knob on top. Underneath the cap are broad whitish gills, usually free from the stem, sometimes attached. Unlike similar-looking mushrooms or fairy rings, there's always quite a bit of space between the gills.

The fairy ring mushroom grows on lawns, where the fungus decomposes organic matter. It often grows in a configuration called a fairy ring.

Before people understood fungi, they thought that fairies had danced in a ring during the night, producing a ring of mushrooms the next morning.