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This shows the difficulty of identifying fungi from images alone. My “help/pointer” would be: make a spore print. Gills of immature fungi are often very pale and darken as the spores ripen. The Marasmius will have white spores and the Psathyrella will have dark brown-blackish spores. As Andreas says the final image may well be a third species (or even Genus!); it might even be a Conocybe (in which case you will have a third colour for the spores: rusty brown).
Thanks for those useful comments Andreas. I’ve just been doing some long overdue ‘filing’ of my fungi images and found these that I took of
E. henriciion 4/9/15 (hope they load OK). Adam, I have gone into ‘edit post’ and loaded the 3 Conocybe images again. For info:I had issues the first time and had to load each image separately. I had to do the same for the second uploading also. My screen is showing 3 images and 2 ‘blanks’.
This was spotted about the 14th April by my sister-in-law, growing in last years tomato ‘gro-bags’ in her greenhouse. She’d pulled them up as ‘buttons’ and to me the buff-ochre caps looked like an Agaricus or maybe Calocybe gambosa. The gills were whitish but there was no mealy smell. With a little encouragement in a moist environment they expanded to 50mm (see attached images).
The gill edge was clearly fimbriate: the lecythiform cystidia and spore colour pointed to Conocybe and with that stout structure it could only be
Conocybe intrusa! Spore shape & size confirm the ID. First time I’ve seen this. The droplets/pruinosity visible on the stem suggest a Panaeolus sp. rather than a Psathyrella. It’s interesting to look at the fruiting period of different Panaeolus spp. My own database has over 200 records of
P. foeniseciiand all collections were made between 19th May and 10th November. This doesn’t mean you won’t see one in April! Two other common spp. occur all year round:
P. acuminatus(syn. rickenii) and P. fimicola(syn. ater). However 70% of my acuminatusrecords are from Sept. to November and 72% of fimicolawere between March and May (this species is usually thought of as a ‘spring mushroom’). So statistically it is likely to be
P. fimicola! Of course you really need to check the spores of Panaeolus spp. under a microscope.
P. foeniseciican be distinguished from other Panaeolus spp. by its warty spores. The other two mentioned have smooth spores but the spore size is different. The pale margin of the cap is where they are drying out; this species is hygrophanous and will be considerably paler when dried out.
Steve wrote:
That last post was identified as most likely Entoloma henricii – a rater rare Pinkgill, by Noordeloos on the BMS Facebook Group. Showing that even with just a broken cap, the microscopy can enough to give an ID.Steve
The description & this identification of the collection that we made at Longshaw Estate in Sept. 2016, prompted me to check out a similar collection that I made on 4/9/15 in local ‘waxcap’ grassland. I had concluded that this wasE. transvenosumas the spores size fitted well as did the veined sides of the gills (athough this sp. is found under trees in woods and parks). But I hadn’t checked the cuticle nor the basidia to see if they were 4-spored (the majority of Entoloma’s are!). Fortunately I still had the voucher and I managed to locate five basidia all of which appeared to be 2-spored: so I conclude my collection is indeed henricii. The cuticle also seemed to be a palisade rather that a cutis although I was stretching my ability at examining dried material here! I also made a similar collection at Tyntesfield on 23/8/10 in grassland which I also ID as
transvenosum: again I feel this was probably henricii. Unfortunately I can’t check the basidia and cuticle of this as the dried specimen has already been sent to Kew. So why did I not pick up on henricii? To begin with, transvenosumis in the Section with the ‘tricholoma’ types whereas henriciiis in Section Trichopilus (types with fibrillose/tomentose/scally caps). Noordeloos’ original description (FE5) states the cap is indeed “velvety-pruinose” but an amended description by him (FE5a) does not mention this feature. What about A. junquillea(syn. gemmata)? A. citrinacan be identified by its strong raw potato smell. The British Checklist keeps cyathiformisseparate from expallensand also lists obbata. It states the first two are woodland inhabitants and obbataas found in unimproved grassland. Tom Kuyper’s 1995 key (in FAN3) agrees with this habitat for
cyathiformisand states “dune grassland” for obbata. He doesn’t include expallensin his key (calling it an ‘enigmatic’ species) so it may well now be regarded as synonymous with cyathiformis. You certainly will come across cyathiformisin grassland habitats although scrub is also often present on such sites. Now you’re in deep! This is one of the sub-genus Leptonia, and you need ‘specialist literature’ (or at least Funga Nordica): there are lots with blue stipes and brownish caps. A microscope is also essential to observe the gill cystidia (if any) and the spore shape & size. More difficult to observe are the pigmentation in the cap cuticle (and even worse) the presence or absence of clamps. Many a happy hour…..
You may be right but it’s impossible to tell really from an image; the stipe of virginia(syn. nivea) can be “…somewhat fibrillose in large specimens” (Boertmann). An indication of size might help (width of cap & stem, length of stem);
pratensisvar. pallidais more ‘chunky’ than virginia. Spore size measurements may help also. Don’t be surprised to find fungi in grassland that are not “grassland fungi”. The gills and stipe seem to have a pink hue so this might be Lepista nuda(Wood Blewit).
