That blue Entoloma

[SheffieldLass]

I finally got round to looking at that blue Entoloma, in unimproved acid grassland inches from Hygrocybe intermedia:



It was a small one, cap 14mm dia. Though not obvious in the field photos, probably due to the rain, the cap was fibrous not smooth, and tufty in the centre ... as can probably be made out from the partially dry specimen (this time of year they dry up before your eyes as you are examining at them ...)



The basidia are 4 sp, there do seem to be a few clamps, though not many ... there are often 'spurs' that look like clamps though, but eventually tracked down some clamps that looked like the real deal ...
clamp in stipellis
clamp in what might be a cheilocystidium

I'm thinking these might be cheilocystidia, they look somewhat like the drawings in FAN1:


Pigment in the pileipellis was intracellular. I don't think there was incrusted, rather just a lot of refractive elements instead. And the hyphae were inflated, especially the terminal elements:

10x pileipellis
40x pileipellis

Spores were (8.3) 8.8-10 (10.3) x (5.7) 6.1-7.1 (7.7) um Q av 1.4, (though these were measured form the gill squash so may be a bit on the small size, the fungus refused to give any for the spore print ), spores quite sharply angular:



FAN1 and Funga Nordica, and Noordeloos' website lead me to the section Leptonia, and to E dichroum if those are cheilocystidia ...

Does this seem right? It is another rare one, which always makes me think I took a wrong turning in the key ....

Melanie

[Chris Yeates]

wow Melanie

this gives an idea of how tricky this genus can be - and how you don't need to collect much else other than an Entoloma or two to have a pleasant (?) evening at the microscope!

I can follow your reasoning - I wince when I remember how most of these that I collected years ago would have been called lazulina because that was the one in Phillips which looked most like them

definitely keep and you would be justified in sending it to Kew (RDB listed species, and might well be the most northerly record for mainland Britain), with your notes; I would wait and see whether more appear though (following the dictum that "one fungus isn't a fungus")

great stuff

Chris

[SheffieldLass]

Originally Posted by Chris Yeates

I would wait and see whether more appear though (following the dictum that "one fungus isn't a fungus")

Chris

I was hoping to get up there again today but the deluge just kept getting heavier .... maybe tomorrow .....

[mollisia]

Hello,

I'm not too happy with Entoloma dichroum, though I have no better idea.
The clamps you show don't seem to be some, in my opinion, and many septae have definitely no clamps on your fotos. E. dichroum should have many clamps.
Also I wouldn't be too sure about the cystidia, I cannot judge from the foto.
And third in this group the stipe surface is of some importance. The foto looks like the stipe being nearly polished but I don't know how you would see that?

best regards,
Andreas

[SheffieldLass]

Originally Posted by mollisia

Hello,

I'm not too happy with Entoloma dichroum, though I have no better idea.
The clamps you show don't seem to be some, in my opinion, and many septae have definitely no clamps on your fotos. E. dichroum should have many clamps.
Also I wouldn't be too sure about the cystidia, I cannot judge from the foto.
And third in this group the stipe surface is of some importance. The foto looks like the stipe being nearly polished but I don't know how you would see that?

best regards,
Andreas

I agree with all that ... there seemed to be just the very occasional clamp, certainly not abundant ... it seemed to produce quite of lot of what I call spurs, short offsets just by the junction, rather than clamps. I'm not sure if they were cystidia or not ... At first I thought there were no cystidia, thought they were just basidia without any refractive content, but then spotted these that showed their length rather than just a tip. It did occur to me that I'd just clipped a bit of the pileipellis though as it was very thin fleshed, though they don't have any of the intracellular pigment. Stipe was finely fibrous, using the hand lens, and appeared smooth to the eye rather than polished. Hopefully some more will appear in the next few weeks so I can have a few more goes at id .

cheers

Melanie

[mollisia]

Hello Melanie,

I think you don't have the key of NOORDELOOS in Fungi Europaei vol. 5A, so here is the way your Entoloma keys in that book. May be it is helpful, so that you can look at the asked features already out in nature (especially colours are changing often within hours ...)

general key:
1. Fruitbodies not with reduced stipe (crepidotoid) -> 2
2. Pileus and/or stipe tinged blue or violaceous -> 3

3. Pileus and stipe with blue or violaceous colour -> Key 2
3. Pileus or stipe with blue or violaceous colour -> 4
often not easy to judge, especially when you have only older fruitbodies. In your case I decided for alternative one and went to Key 2

Key 2
1. Pileus not glabrous, but fibrillose, tomentose, squamulose or rugulose, at least at centre; pileipellis in such places with elements > 10 µm wide -> 5
(The other alternativ "pileus glabrous" gives only four species, which all do not suit your finding, e.g. E. bloxamii and nitidum)
5. Lamella edge concolorous with sides or brown, but not of serrulatum-type -> 11
11. Lamellae without blue or violaceous tinge -> 20
20. Clamp connections absent -> 29
(this should be verified in another specimen)
29. Pileus opaque, not translucently striate -> 31
(the alternative "pileus translucently striate" leeds to only two species which both have a brownish colour of the pileus with squamulses on it)
31. Cheolycystidia not with yellow granulose content -> 32
32. Cheilocystidia, if present, distinctly shorter (= not up to 125 µm long) -> 33
33. Spores at most up to 12,5 µm long -> 35
35. Pileus not rather pale brown with faint blue tinge at margin only when young -> 36
36. Stipe covered with fibrils, which may agglutinate in small flocks or squamules -> 41
(the alternative would be "stipe glabrous polished". You ruled out this)

41. Pileus and stipe violaceous to violaceous-black -> 42
41. Pileus and stipe blue -> 45
Cannot judge this one, but would tend to the first alternative may be.

If you go to 42., four species are mentioned:
E. pachydermum with very small spores of 6,5-8(8,5) µm
E. nigroviolaceum with pileus up to 7,5 cm
E. mougeotii - we know this species and it looks quite different
E. alvarense, known only from the type locality in Estonia up to now.

If you got to 45, the question about the cheilocystidia arises.
If it has none, E. atrocaeruleum would be the choice. This is the most likely "determination" of your species in my eyes at the moment.
If you accept cheilocystidia to be present, three species are left:
E. corvinum, which has deep blackish-blue colours on stipe and cap which contrast strongly to the lamellae. (Not convincing to me for your specimen)
E. armoricanum, with a stipe strongly fibrillose with blackish-blue fibrils on glaucous-blue background - also not convincing
E. caeruleum, which would also agree quite well to your Entoloma.

So, to resume, in the moment for me either E. atrocaeruleum or E. caeruleum would be choice, but that may turn out as rubbish when a whole collection is found and the variation of colours and surfaces of cap and stipe can be better established. Additionally the occurence of clamps and cystidia have to be checked again to be sure in these characters too.

And - keep in mind that it is always possible to have something not mentioned in literature yet ....

best regards,
Andreas

[SheffieldLass]

Thanks Andreas ... I'll go through it carefully in a few minutes time. I've visited the site again today, and found plenty .. well about 30+ with blue stipes but more of a brownish cap, although the caps do reflect blue quite strongly when not in bright sunlight. Not sure if they are the same as the first, but I'll do a microscope check to see if they tally at that level. They were in the same field as the other, some were probably not more than a few metres away from the original. I'll post the details in due course ....

Melanie

[SheffieldLass]

Hi Andreas

Well 48 hours later the waters are further muddied ....

These are photos of some of the ones I found on the 30th. Same field as the first, and selected from different groups in the field, though #A and #D were probably no more than 50cm apart. None had quite the violet blue cap of the first, but the weather was (briefly) dry, compared with torrential rain for the first.



E is shown taken in direct sunlight and also in shadow. They did tend to look brownish in sunlight but some retained an indigo centre. In other lights there is a definite indigo appearance to more of the cap. The stipes were pretty much the same for all colourwise, very definitely blue, with slight differences in the amount of fibres, but generally finely to very finely fibrous, but with a smooth satin/matt apparance...

Now #A turned out to have cheilocystidia .... I don't have a photo of the cap of that one, but there was to me no obvious differences compared with the others. And they were unmistakeably cheilocystidia in the right place on the gill edge.



They do look somewhat similar to those I wondered about with the first one. However #B, #C, #D did not have any cheilocystida at all, and I tried about 8 gills of #B, and made absolutely sure that I was looking at the gill edge (they were nice big gills easy to handle and get the right bit to look at ) and I checked about 4 gills each of the other three. Nothing even slightly resembling cheilocystidia. However the gill trama, basidia, pileipellis and stipipellis were very consistent between all. And not a single clamp or even spur. In that respect the first from the other day seemed to differ, having many of those spurs. And also the basidia looked slightly different, longer and more slender in the first compared with these.

I then checked the spores. First from a gill squash (as that was where I obtained the spore dimensions from for the first, because the fungus had dried a bit too quickly and refused a spore print .... thought it best to check like with like) .... Well, #A, #B and #D were pretty much the same ... quite long spores. And very similar results were obtained from the spore prints that I also did. Whereas #C were shorter and broader. And the original Entoloma was smaller than #A,B,D, but of similar proportions to them.


I had picked C out from the bunch as one to check because its stem was the most fibrous, and the cap the least indigo (no photo of it unfortunately, the camera battery had died fully by then).


spores from #A
spores from #B
spores from #C

The spores are probably not so different to not be on the same continuum though:
with #C averaging at 9.7 x 7.5 um Q av = 1.3
#A 10.2 x 7.1 um Qav 1.4
#B 11.4 x 7.3 um Qav 1.6
#D 10.4 x 7.1 um Qav 1.5

compared with the original 9.4 x 6.6 um Qav 1.4

I'm now just about to go through the key you so kindly posted above, see if it sheds any further light ..... though I'm not sure where the extra details above leaves us except heading rapidly for the simple Entoloma key that AlanB gave us recently .. the one which divides Entoloma into E conferendum or 'the rest' ....

I did notice that on Mykoweb there is a picture of an Entoloma in the Leptonia range (no species name given) that is the spitting image macroscopically, and also that many have not been given species names, just allocated to sub groups ...

cheers

Melanie

Oh, here are a few more of the clamps/spurs for the original one, I've just looked back through the pics I captured. The basidia appears to have a typical clamp. The rest are more like spurs. None of the other Entolma had any of these though, so I think we can assume fairly safely that they don't have clamps.

basidia clamp

in the stipipellis

in the pileipellis

cheers

Melanie

[kiltoncomp]

i found these specimens today and remembered this thread saying that some similar ones were found inches away from a Hygrocybe sp

the black ones pictured here were inches away from the Hygrocybe,
are they the same two species, or i have i got something different here?







thanks,
Brian.

.................................................. .................

Originally Posted by SheffieldLass

I finally got round to looking at that blue Entoloma, in unimproved acid grassland inches from Hygrocybe intermedia:



It was a small one, cap 14mm dia. Though not obvious in the field photos, probably due to the rain, the cap was fibrous not smooth, and tufty in the centre ... as can probably be made out from the partially dry specimen (this time of year they dry up before your eyes as you are examining at them ...)





Melanie

[Chris Yeates]

Originally Posted by kiltoncomp

i found these specimens today and remembered this thread saying that some similar ones were found inches away from a Hygrocybe sp

the black ones pictured here were inches away from the Hygrocybe,
are they the same two species, or i have i got something different here?
. . . .

unfortunately it's not impossible to have two or more superficially-similar yet different species growing in close proximity - among grassland fungi Geoglossum is a classic case of this

there are several examples of when a type collection has been found to be a mixture of two or even more species - leading to complications as to which fungus the name should be applied to

cheers

Chris