Another unknown from Clumber

[FungiJohn]

I found this solitary fungus in leaf litter on Lime tree avenue, Clumber Park.



Please excuse the slightly manipulated image but it was the only way to show all the features.

John

[Alantb]

Its a Stropharia, probably S. aeruginosa - but the gills are rather pale. Did they gradually become darker (as the spores matured)? The other candidate is S. caerulea, which may be more likely as this is not supposed to have as prominent a ring as aeruginosa.
Maybe fungusken would tell us.
Alan

[CloudedYellow]

Originally Posted by Alantb

Its a Stropharia, probably S. aeruginosa - but the gills are rather pale. Did they gradually become darker (as the spores matured)? The other candidate is S. caerulea, which may be more likely as this is not supposed to have as prominent a ring as aeruginosa.
Maybe fungusken would tell us.
Alan

I distinuished these two last year with some help but cannot tell from this image. S. caerulea is supposed to have conclourous pinkisk gills when young and to loosing ring quickly but I was not convinced. I think the gill edges are pale in your picture and wonder how old these are. I favour aeruginosa. The key feature, as I understand it is the absence of cheilocystidia in S. aeruginosa.

Associated habitat maybe helpful. I remember Bon being the only one to mention nettles - my only S. caerulea was with nettles.

Richard

[mykonik]

Originally Posted by FungiJohn

I found this solitary fungus in leaf litter on Lime tree avenue, Clumber Park.



Please excuse the slightly manipulated image but it was the only way to show all the features.

John

No, sorry folks - not a Stropharia although I can see why it was suggested - the rings of vedigris coloured scales around the stipe are the clue to this one !!

This is Lepiota grangei John - and the most stunning image I have ever seen of it I might add whether manipulated or not - beautiful, and very typical, showing all the right features !!

Originally named Agaricus grangei by the Rev. Eyre, the epithet comes from 'The Grange' at Northington nr. Alresford in Hampshire where he first collected it. It's especially 'common', or should I say can be very abundant rather than common, under hawthorn scrub on calcareous soil.

Nick

[Fungus Ken]

A beautiful shot, indeed John. I found this species a couple of years ago at Roudsea Woods in Cumbria. The colour is quite distinctive and unusual.

Of course there are a few clues in the photo that could have been used to rule out Stropharia:

- the spores would be purplish brown, so the gills of a mature specimen like this would be distinctly coloured by the ripening spores. The gills in the photo are white, hinting at white spores;
- the ring/ring zone on the stem of S. aeruginosa and S. caerulea often catches the spores so you might notice a dark staining. There are no signs of dark spores caught in the fibrils on the stem of the specimens in the photo;
- the gills of the two species of Stropharia would be broadly adnate. You can see from the photo that the gills are definitely not broadly attached to the stem. In fact they look free to me.
- any remains of the veil as scales on the cap in Stropharia would be ephemeral ie they quickly disappear. The scales would be whitish or ochre but not this distinctive green. Also the scales on the caps of the specimens in the photo look innate. They will not wash off in the rain;
- the orange colouration and green scales on the stem would not be present in either species of Stropharia.

Shall I go on?

Ken

[FungiJohn]

Many thanks Nick and Ken

This find was on the same day as the Psathyrella species.

We actually had a WAB meet that day at Clumber. Meeting Stu, Andrew, Steve and my old friend Graham. So time was quite short.

As so often happens I didn’t take the specimen home

If anyone wishes to have a higher quality image for reference purposes just shout

Kind Regards - John

[Alantb]

Wow! - never heard of that Lepiota at all; I thought the cap looked a bit 'funny' but put it down to the weather or something! I really must get out more.
Super photograph.
Alan

[CloudedYellow]

Originally Posted by Fungus Ken

Of course there are a few clues in the photo that could have been used to rule out Stropharia:

Ken

Thanks as always for the details Ken and Nick. Interesting to note Nick's comment that it was orginally classed as an Agaricus, That's quite useful for a struggler like myself as it will remind me of its Agaricus-like features of white spores and free gills!

Richard

[Fungus Ken]

Originally Posted by CloudedYellow

That's quite useful for a struggler like myself as it will remind me of its Agaricus-like features of white spores and free gills!

... except that Agaricus would, of course, have chocolate brown spores.

Ken

[mykonik]

Originally Posted by CloudedYellow

Thanks as always for the details Ken and Nick. Interesting to note Nick's comment that it was orginally classed as an Agaricus, That's quite useful for a struggler like myself as it will remind me of its Agaricus-like features of white spores and free gills!

Richard

Not quite as useful as it seems Richard - in fact the genus Agaricus of Linnaeus was used for virtually everything / anything with the faccies of a 'toadstool' i.e that had a cap, a stem and gills on the underside of the cap -not actually very helpful, but a convenient place to start the taxonomy of these organisms and lump everything 'toadstool-like' together ! Nowadays Agaricus is only used for those things with purplish brown spores that we know as proper 'mushrooms'

The same could be said about Boletus which was the original genus for anything with pores (including what we now call boletes in the modern day sense but also including all of the polypores / brackets)

And Peziza for anything 'cup-shaped' (jncluding a mixture of ascomycetes and some of the corticioid basidiomycetes) and Helvella for anyhting 'cup shaped but on a stalk' (and that also included several 'toadstools')

How it's all changed !!!!


Nick