Part 30

~Hygrocybe psittacina~ (Fries) Wunsche

Parrot hygrophorus

Cap: width 12-25 mm. Stem: width 3-8 mm; length 30-60 mm.

Description:

Cap: very slimy with colourless sticky fluid, deep bluish green when fresh, but becoming more and more ochraceous-orange with age or completely fading out to a yellow ochre, bell-shaped at first then expanded except for central umbo.

Stem: like the cap very slimy, apple-green or bluish green throughout but becoming ochraceous like the cap except at the apex which is persistently green.

Gills: adnate yellow or apricot-coloured, greenish towards their base, broad, distant and rather tough.

Flesh: whitish, tinged green in the cap and yellow or apricot-colour in the stem.

Spore-print: white.

Spores: medium-sized, hyaline, ellipsoid, not blue-grey in solutions containing iodine and 8-9 × 4-5 µm in size.

Marginal and facial cystidia: absent.

Habitat & Distribution: Common in grassland and hill-pastures, but it also occurs in copses and woodlands.

General Information: This fungus is easily recognised by the distinctive colours, but it is rather deceptive for the cap and the stem soon become faded; however, the green colouration persists at the apex of the stem and it is by this that in the faded state the fungus can still be identified. H. laeta (Fries) Kummer fades to similar colours but the cap is flesh-colour at first or sordid brown and the gills are flesh-coloured or greyish; it prefers upland pastures and heathland: its spores are smaller, being 5-7 × 4 µm.

Illustrations: F 12a; Hvass 92; LH 79; NB 33⁶; WD 34⁵.

General notes on Hygrophori

Hygrophori are some of our most colourful groups of agarics, many are brightly coloured with caps in reds, greens, yellows, oranges, etc., the colour often accentuated by the usually slimy aspect. Traditionally the genus Hygrophorus has been split into three groups as follows:--

Limacium with slimy cap, adnate to decurrent gills and slimy or tacky stem which may also often be ornamented with dots, especially towards the top.

Camarophyllus with dry cap, smooth and fibrous stem and decurrent gills.

Hygrocybe with thin, fragile, sticky or moist cap, smooth fibrillose stem and gills varying from free to decurrent.

The last two sections have been joined together into the single genus Hygrocybe and all the members seem to be saprophytic or intimately associated with grassland communities. The first section Limacium now makes up the genus Hygrophorus and its members are thought to be mycorrhizal with trees, e.g. H. hypothejus (Fries) Fries with pine, the ‘Herald of the winter’ because it occurs at the end of the fungus season and H. chrysaspis Métrod, a whitish, sickly-smelling fungus under beech. Results from examining the anatomy of the gills appears to confirm these divisions. All the Hygrophori have a homogeneous flesh, white spores, central, fleshy stem and thick, waxy gills; microscopically this group of fungi can be recognised by the very long basidia.

The following are common examples of the genus Hygrocybe:--

~H. calyptraeformis~ (Berkeley & Broome) Fayod has a rose-pink, conical cap which expands to become upturned at the edge with age.

~H. coccinea~ (Fries) Kummer has a bright scarlet cap which becomes yellow-ochre on drying and a yellow base to a scarlet stem.

~H. conica~ (Fries) Kummer has an orange to red stem and sharply conical cap which turns blackish with age and whose gills when cut exude a clear watery liquid.

~H. flavescens~ (Kauffman) Singer has a slimy, golden yellow cap and similarly coloured stem.

~H. chlorophana~ is similar, but has a lemon-yellow cap and stem.

~H. punicea~ (Fries) Kummer is a large and robust species, similar in colour to H. coccinea but with a white base to the stem.

~H. unguinosa~ (Fries) Karsten has a smoky grey, very slimy cap and stem.