Cystoderma amianthinum - Earthy Powdercap

Taxonomy

Phylum: Basidiomycota

Class: Agaricomycetes

Order: Agaricales

These colourful little mushrooms (main picture courtesy John Chester) turn up in all sorts of grassy-mossy places, but they are most common on acid moorland and heathland.

On lawns, Earthy Powdercaps sometimes produce fairy rings several metres in diameter. Powdercaps usually do have granular cap surfaces, but their most distinctive feature is the marked contrast between the smoothness of the stem above the ring and its scaly surface below. The overall impression is of a mushroom wearing an ill-fitting stocking.

Identification Guide

	Cap 2 to 5cm across; initially convex, becoming broadly convex or flat; colour variable from pale ochraceous yellow to reddish brown (centre darker and umbonate in Cystoderma amianthinum var. rugosoreticulatum); surface finely granular, sometimes radially wrinkled. Gills Adnate or adnexed; crowded; white at first, becoming cream. Stem 3 to 5cm long and 4 to 8mm dia.; colour as cap or darker, but paler above ring; smooth or very finely granular above ring, scaly below; cylindrical; small collar-like persistent tan ring.
	Spores White or pale cream (in mass); 5 to 6 x 3 to 3.5μm, ellipsoid to oblong; amyloid.
Odour/taste	Musty or earthy odour; taste not significant.
Habitat	Saprobic in grassland and woodland edges; occasionally also in woods, on heathland and even on mossy edges of bogs.
Season	Summer and autumn.
Occurrence	Fairly common and widespread.
Related species	Squamanita paradoxa, the Powdercap Strangler, is a rare grassland mushroom that attacks the Earthy Powdercap, Cystoderma amianthinum, apparently growing up through its stem and producing a voilet cap in place of the orange cap of the Earthy Powdercap. The lower part of the stem remains identical to that of the host mushroom, giving a very strange two-tone effect.