Quote:
Originally Posted by flaxton  I sent off the dried specimen  so on this occasion as the expression goes up North - I'm sayin nowt
Mal |
I think this is a classic example where a spore print from a fresh specimen would have helped enormously.
I have to confess that I couldn't even venture a guess at the identity from the photo.
But what you can see from the photo is a specimen with a distinctly fibrillose cap. Aside from Nick's point about the stem, which is a significant issue, I would also be concerned about the texture of the cap.
Flora Agaricina Neerlandica 4 gives the following description for
Hydropus floccipes:
"Basidiocarp mycenoid; pileus 5-25 mm, from conical or parabolical to applanate or slightly depressed with umbo, dark brown to grey-brown sometimes with olivaceous tinge, sometimes paler at margin and darker at centre, later pale grey-brown, with margin mostly non-striate but becoming striate in late stages, glabrous, minutely fibrillose under lens, sometimes somwhat rugulose;"
British Fungus Flora 8 says of the genus
Hydropus that the caps are smooth, fibrillose under a lens. The cap of
H. floccipes is said to be "radially silky atomate not striate, becoming minutely scaly in the centre".
I have to say that the photo appears to show a cap with a very different cuticle from that being described in either FAN4 or BFF8. The texture looks distinctly fibrillose to the naked eye... but how does this compare with "radially silky atomate".
In keying out the specimen, if I had arrived at
Hydropus floccipes for the specimen in this photo, I think I'd be retracing my steps and checking thoroughly that I had not been led astray at some point.
But with a little-known species like this you just can't say very much of any substance based only on a photo. The person who had the specimen and looked at the evidence first-hand definitely has the upper hand in a case like this.
Ken