Hygrocybe spadicea - Date Waxcap

Taxonomy

Phylum: Basidiomycota

Class: Agaricomycetes

Order: Agaricales

One of the Britain's rarest fungi, the Date Waxcap is immediately recognisable by its dark-brown cap colouring and yellow or orange gills and stem. Although it occurs throughout most of Europe, nowhere is this striking waxcap anything but a very occasional find. In Britain it is a BAP species. Although south-facing slopes on calcareous unimproved grassland are usually the best places for date Waxcaps, they confound us by turning up once in a while in neutral and even acid grassland.

The Date Waxcap shown above was photographed by David Harries, with whose kind permission it is included here and in Fascinated by Fungi, a major new book published by First Nature in September 2011.

Identification Guide

Cap	A distinctive dark brown, the caps are at first broadly conical, developing lobes and eventually expanding but retaining a fairly acute umbo; often the margin splits to reveal the pale cap flesh beneath the cap cuticle.
Gills	The adnexed to free gills are yellow or occasionally pale orange.
Stem	Yellow or pale orange, the cylindrical stem is fibrilose and sometimes with brown longitudinal fibres, 3 to 12mm in diameter and 3.5 to 12cm tall; it has no ring.
Spore print	White.
Spores	Elipsoid, 9 to 12 x 5 to 7μm.
Odour/taste	Not distinctive.
Habitat	In unimproved dry grassland.
Season	August to November.
Occurrence	Very rare.
Similar species	Hygrophorus hypothejus has an olivaceous-brown cap; it is a woodland species.