Various

[thelawnet]

Clitocybe nebularis? Or geotropa?





odor faint, of blossoms
(pictured on dinner plate)

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Leccinum scabrum?



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Clitocybe fragrans/harmajae - which?



strongly aromatic smell

--

Unknown Agaricus sp:

(pictured on side plate)

[alge]

Hello, lawnet

1 looks a lot like C.nebularis, it seems to have the clowded look to the center of the cap and the wavey edge. C.geotropa tends to be a bit tougher accross the cap slightly more uniformed in colour (yellowish) and the edge of the cap is more inrolled(not so flat in cross section as nebularis). we found many yesterday and the smells were different but i cant think how to explain the difference.

2 pretty sure your right.

I'm sure the other two will be helped along and i will be corrected soon.

Next year if you can make the KWT. fungi study days your money wont be wasted, they have been a fantastic experience with two great foray leaders.

best regards

Alex

[Ken Burgess]

Originally Posted by thelawnet

Clitocybe fragrans/harmajae - which?



strongly aromatic smell

Clitocybe fragrans is strongly hygrophanous and does dry out to a very pale colour. The smell is recognisably of aniseed, although it seems to me to be a different smell from that of Clitocybe odora, which also smells of aniseed.

I don't know Clitocybe harmajae but this seems to be more of a grassland or ruderal species, whereas C. fragrans is typically a woodland species. But I don't think the former is likely, bearing in mind what it says in the Basidiomycota Checklist:

'Not authentically British. A species of high montane and boreal habitat, reported from England and the Republic of Ireland from lowland deciduous woodland and unsubstantiated with voucher material. Considered a synonym of C. amarescens in FAN3.'

Some of these small hygrophanous species are hard to separate with certainty. You would need to know the spore colour (e.g. white or cream), spore size and the type of pigmentation in the cap cuticle to be sure.

But if the smell was recognisable as aniseed, I'd have recorded it as Clitocybe fragrans, which is quite a variable species (and has been split into several species by some authorities).

Ken

[mollisia]

Hello,

o.k. for the first two.

The third seems to be Hygrophorus eburneus to me.

The 4th is indeed an Agaricus, one of the brown capped and non-reddening species. It might be Agaricus vaporarius, but there are some similar species. Note the strong mycelial "rope", which may be a species character (e.g. A: romagnesii has such rhizomorphs).

best regards,
Andreas

[Ken Burgess]

Originally Posted by mollisia

The third seems to be Hygrophorus eburneus to me.

Well, I wouldn't have got to Hygrophorus with this specimen but it would certainly explain the aromatic smell.

If it is Hygrophorus eburneus then it must be a very dried out specimen because this species is usually distinctly viscid to glutinous (often giving the cap a shiny appearance even when dry), whereas the one in the photo looks to have a very dry and matt texture to the cap cuticle. Also the gills on this specimen look quite closely packed, thin and fragile whereas I would have expected Hygrophorus to have relatively widely spaced and thickish, waxy gills. So it is by no means typical if that's what it is.

Ken

[flaxton]

Originally Posted by mollisia

The 4th is indeed an Agaricus, one of the brown capped and non-reddening species. It might be Agaricus vaporarius,
Andreas

Andreas
I thought A vaporarius did turn red on cutting?

Mal

[mollisia]

Originally Posted by flaxton

Andreas
I thought A vaporarius did turn red on cutting?

Mal

Yes, correct. I thought about the silvaticus group, which becomes blood-red when cut. But A. vaporarius also reddens a little, you are right. So perhaps A. romagnesii is best choice as a guess. But thats by no means a determination.

best regards,
Andreas

[mollisia]

Originally Posted by Ken Burgess

Well, I wouldn't have got to Hygrophorus with this specimen but it would certainly explain the aromatic smell.

If it is Hygrophorus eburneus then it must be a very dried out specimen because this species is usually distinctly viscid to glutinous (often giving the cap a shiny appearance even when dry), whereas the one in the photo looks to have a very dry and matt texture to the cap cuticle. Also the gills on this specimen look quite closely packed, thin and fragile whereas I would have expected Hygrophorus to have relatively widely spaced and thickish, waxy gills. So it is by no means typical if that's what it is.

Ken

Hello Ken,

those two Hygrophorus - eburneus and discoxanthus - have not very thick gills. Those "thick" gills are anyway a very bad character for separating the whole Hygrophoraceae from the rest of the agarics in my opinion. In some species they are thick (H. marzuolus e.g.), in others you can't say if one is honest. On the other hand I have some Tricholomas (e.g. saponaceum) which would perfectly be a Hygrophorus from this point of view).

May be it is Hygrophorus deiscoxanthus, which dries up much faster then eburneus and becomes slightly velvety on the cap. But then the fruitbody should become dark reddish-rusty-brownish when drying, at least the gills.
Tricholoma lascivum would be another idea, but that smell is not "aromatic", is it?
At least I would say it is not a CLitocybe from the fragrans group, I'm quite sure with that.

best regards,
Andreas

[thelawnet]

Originally Posted by mollisia

Hello,

o.k. for the first two.

The third seems to be Hygrophorus eburneus to me.

What is the distinction between Hygrophorus and Clitocybe?

I have 'viscid cap' and 'thick gills' (I assume 'thick' in this context is synonymous with 'fat', and refers to gills that are visibly plump), is this entirely accurate?

Viscidity is of course an elusive thing, this specimen was soaked by a heavy rain storm, but then sat in a paper bag for 6 hours in my house before being photographed.

The gills of this specimen are much thicker than the Agaricus but less so than the larger Clitocybe, they are less crowded than Agaricus likewise.

The cap does not feel at all greasy, the gills are however fairly waxy, and brittle like a Russula.

The smell is wonderfully aromatic, but is perhaps not anise but something else.

[Ken Burgess]

If you look at the usual keys for identifying down to genus macroscopically, the main way of splitting Hygrophorus from Clitocybe is always given as the gills being noticeably thick and waxy in Hygrophorus, whereas in Clitocybe they are thin and not waxy. Microscopically this relates to the basidia in Hygrophorus being particularly long (more than 5 times the length of the mature spores). So the keys relying on macroscopic differences become pretty much redundant if you can't use this character, as Andreas suggests (although you can separate them microscopically).

But typically you wouldn't need to go to a key for the white or whitish species of Hygrophorus once you get your eye in because they just look very different from Clitocybe, which is why I would not have put your specimen down as a Hygrophorus. And it doesn't look like Tricholoma lascivum either to me.

If I'd found your specimen with an aromatic rather than aniseed smell, I'd have been doing the microscopy to get any further.

Ken