Quote:
Originally Posted by juliejam  Thats another one confirmed ..thanx for that ... 
Julie |
No it aint.
This is not
Cortinarius violaceus.
Cortinarius is a genus that is very difficult to identify to species because often subtle macroscopic differences are used to separate them.
Cortinarius violaceus always has a tomentose cap, often with distinct tufts, unlike the specimen in the photo which has a smooth cap. This is not a feature that washes away or can be lost. All you have to do is google images of
Cortinarius violaceus to see the typical texture of the cap surface. The specimens in the photo could not be mistaken for
Cortinarius violaceus by anyone who has any familiarity with the species ... but since it's very uncommon to say the least, not many people will be familiar with it.
The difficulty we are faced with here is that we don't know the spore colour so it is easy to fall into completely the wrong genus.
Lepista nuda would have a pinkish spore print while
Cortinarius would have a rust brown spore print. This is a character you can easily resolve at home with a spore print but it is also often possible to work this out in the field if you look at the gills of a mature specimen with a hand lens - you can see little patches of powder which are collections of ripe spores. Without this information you are almost working blind.
In mature specimens of
Cortinarius you often see evidence of the rusty spores trapped in remains of the cortina ie partial veil on the stem or edge of the cap. I can't see any evidence of a cortina on the stem or edge of the cap of the mature specimen so I am not even convinced it is a
Cortinarius. My gut feeling is that this is likely to have been very fresh specimens of
Lepista nuda, as Leif suggested but was talked out of.
Lepista nuda often has a perfumy smell when fresh, which could be mistaken for other smells. There aren't any
Cortinarius species that spring to mind that would be as distinctive as the species in the photo.
But without the spore colour it can only be a hunch.
Ken