Part 39

Wood blewits

Cap: width 70-100 mm. Stem: width 10-15 mm; length 70-100 mm.

Description: Plate 42.

Cap: rounded then flattened or slightly depressed in the centre, smooth, bluish lilac, or violaceous when young but gradually with age becoming reddish-brown, with or without a flush of wine colour.

Stem: similarly coloured to the cap, equal, fleshy, elastic, fibrillose and streaky.

Gills: adnate with or without a decurrent tooth, crowded, lilac and easily separable from the cap-tissue by the fingers.

Flesh: bluish violaceous, but drying out dirty buff in the base of the stem.

Spore-print: flesh-coloured.

Spores: medium-sized, ellipsoid appearing smooth but very minutely roughened under the microscope, although it is very difficult to see except with a good instrument (6-8 × 4-5 µm in size).

Marginal and facial cystidia: absent.

Habitat & Distribution: Widespread in troops or small groups in copses and under hedgerows and not uncommon in flower-beds in gardens in late autumn and early winter especially on compost heaps and in rhubarb patches which have been mulched with piles of moribund leaves.

General Information: This fungus was originally placed in Tricholoma, but due to differences in anatomy and the distinctly coloured and ornamented spores it has been placed along with ‘common blewits’ T. personatum (Fries) Kummer (or better L. saeva (Fries) P. D. Orton), in the genus Lepista. This genus which is also called Rhodopaxillus, again referring to the pinkish spore-print, is not found in many of the easily obtainable books. One should look for the fungus under Tricholoma, from which it can be separated easily by the beautiful colour.

Both the ‘wood blewits’ and ‘common blewits’ have been regularly sold in markets in England within the last fifty years. They are edible and considered of high quality. In their fresh state they are easily recognised, but as they age they become browned and so resemble many other less desirable fungi.

Illustrations: F 17^{d}; Hvass 49; LH 91; NB 125²; WD 12³ (a bit too pastel).

~Agaricus bisporus~ (J. Lange) Pilát

Common mushroom

Cap: width 40-100 mm. Stem: width 15-25 mm; length 50-75 mm.

Description: Plate 43.

Cap: rounded gradually expanding to become plane, whitish with numerous brown radiating fibrils and with the margin irregular because of fragments from the ring which are left there after expansion of the cap.

Stem: short, cylindrical, smooth, bruising reddish-brown when handled and with a narrow ring which soon collapses and disappears.

Gills: free, pink at first then purple-brown, narrow and crowded.

Flesh: solid, thick, firm and slowly flushing brownish on cutting.

Spore-print: purple-brown.

Spores: medium-sized, broadly ellipsoid, purple-brown under the microscope, less than 10 µm long, (6-8 × 5-6 µm).

Marginal cystidia: club-shaped, 10-12 µm at apex.

Facial cystidia: absent.

Basidia: 2-spored.

Habitat & Distribution: Frequent on manure heaps, straw heaps, on road scrapings and around garden plants.