Bright green penny size cave toadstool?

[seabeggar]

Been out with the kids today beachcombing in Western Highlands and found a bright green gelatanous one penny size toadstool growing in the gloomy depths of a coastal cave. Have some photos in my archive when I can work out how to post them here. Can someone give me some identification options so I can have a look in the Gallery. Thanks.

[naturelover]

welcome seabegger,cant help you with your green toadstool havnt a clue sorry,hope you enjoy your stay.

[Bruce Williams]

Hi Seabeggar - The only green fungus that I can think of at this time of year is Green Elfcup (Chlorociboria aeruginascens). This is found in dark places like underside of logs etc - but I'm not at all sure about caves?

Try searching the Gallery and at worst you will eliminate this as a possibility.

Bruce

[Kayleigh]

You click on the photo then scroll down and copy and paste the url address..

[url=http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk ect ect

I open a new tab to this but you can just copy and go into the thread and paste it there. Hope this helps. I couldn't find your pic or I would have pasted it for you..

[seabeggar]

http://

Hope this includes the link to archive photo I took.

[Leif]

It's a Hygrocybe psittacina, or Parrot Wax Cap. Fairly common in Autumn in unimproved grassland, and not normally a Winter species. Odd habitat.

[Fungus Ken]

How very, very odd.

Leif is right, in that just looking at it, the only species that springs to mind in the UK with these distinctive green colours is Hygrocybe psittacina (however you pronounce it ).

But there are a couple of things that puzzle me. First the habitat. This species normally grows in grassland, although it might be found occasionally in woodland, but there is a close association with grasses. There doesn't seem to be any grass in the photo, but then again the fungus could have been growing and feeding some distance from where it "fruited".

The second is the gill attachment. The gills of H. psittacina are not normally decurrent. They can be adnate, or adnate with a decurrent tooth, but even so they are usually ascending, so that you should not be able to see the gill attachment in a shot taken from the angle in this photo. In fact the gill attachment is one of the characters that is used in the field to separate this species from H. laeta, which is never as green as this, but can have greenish tones, particularly towards the top of the stem. The colours of H. psittacina are very variable and with specimens with little green on it can be confusing. However, H. laeta has decurrent gills and this separates it from H. psittacina in the field... or does it? But the jizz of the specimen in the photo is not right for H. laeta.

Had I found this myself I would have been doing a lot of microscopy to be certain it was just Hygrocybe psittacina and not something more exotic!

Ken

[Leif]

As Ken indicates, had a professional mycologist found this specimen, they might well have rushed back to the lab to examine it in more detail. There are quite a few species which thrive in salty coastal habitats but otherwise look just like more common inland species. Hygrocybe conica var conicoides is a good example.

[seabeggar]

Here is a slightly out of focus picture of the gills and also next to it another specimen sprouting (or whatever fungi do) . The cave is dry at the front, lots of sheep droppings, but wet at the back with water percolating through what must be several meters of soil and rock, with rough coastal grazing above. No grass in the cave.

[Fungus Ken]

The habitat is so unusual that it would make an interesting article in the journal Field Mycology.

If I were you, I would send the information you have given in this thread along with the photos to the Senior Editor. Email address at the following link:

Field Mycology - Elsevier

They are always looking out for unusual finds or finds in unusual places. I think your green mushroom scores on both counts! Do email them and see what they have to say. You could find your photo is just what they are looking for for a future edition.

Ken