foxed by this one

[alge]

Yet another from my village, growing in a vaguely half crescent troop of around 12 or so fruit bodies, some appear to be in clumps but the 3 noted by another local enthusiast last week were individuals. Growing around a Fagus(Beech) and near a Betula(Birch).

Cap
Size, emergent/young around 1-1.5cm up to 6cm in most mature specimen.
Colour, black/brown when young(may appear purplish on screen) to shades of brown when mature, smooth with a whitish scaly cap margin which consists of partial veil fragments.
Shape, consistently close to hemispherical on the emergent fruits expanding out to umbonate in the larger caps.

Stem
Appears stout but is brittle when touched in most young specimens, hollow above the base and consistent splitting of the stem( it hasn't been dry lately so drought not an issue, could be over consumption). The surface has strong striations running into the gills at the top of the stipe above where the veil would have attached(veil not evident on any mature stem), fibrillose lower down towards the base.
Colour, whitish to grey bruising brownish where the flesh has peeled and weathered.

Flesh
White then greying, no great change when bruised, no distinct smell other than mushroomy.

Gills
Sinuate running into stem striations, moderately spaced forking towards the margin.
Greyish in colour but becoming more pinkish with age.
No colour change on the gill edge but they do seam to have an alternate pattern of smoothish to jagged saw like.
Spore pint is ocherous.

images taken with my mobile phone and a x10 compound hand held lens

We have checked both of our sets of books and tried a few computer based keys.
We are left with a few troublesome factors, resulting in having so many distinguishing features that we are surprised not to have got as far as genus let alone sp.

Any help would be appreciated

Alex

[Morchella]

Maybe a Hebeloma?

Laura

[mollisia]

Hello,

I posted a long reply on this one yesterday evening, but it is gone!?!

your fungus is Agrocybe erebia.

best regards,
Andreas

[alge]

Thanks for looking for us,

Laura we have hovered around Hebeloma for a while, the clump possibility and the description of H.truncatum wasnt a bad fit, but the stem flesh and gill attachment were off.

Andreas its a shame about your post going missing, thankfuly you posted again. The Dark field cap Agrocybe erebia looks pretty spot on to me I've just googled my way through a few links and the darker(wetter) examples look pretty good and so are some of the descriptions. One image in particular on wildaboutdenmark was very similar indeed. I have one reference in my books which is in phillips and i have to say the image is no where near and the description is not a good indication which is most unusual for my most trusted book. In general my books dont cover Agrocybes i guess they are not considered sexy enough by the publishers/editors for the more general interest book market. I shall pass on your suggestion and the links, we may even be able to do microscopy on the spores this weekend to check against the images on the net.

Thank you very much

Alex