Melanoleuca polioleuca - Common Cavalier

Taxonomy

Phylum: Basidiomycota

Class: Agaricomycetes

Order: Agaricales

With a dark cap covering pallid gills, this is a tricky species to identify from macroscopic features alone; it occurs in deciduous broadleaf woodland and with conifers, notably pines, and is a saprotroph (feeding on rotting wood and other organic vegetation).

Many people use the synonym Melanoleuca melaleuca, now deprecated in favour of Melanoleuca polioleuca. Other synonyms include Melaleuca vulgaris, Melanoleuca arcuata and Tricholoma polioleucum.

Identification Guide

Cap	4 to 8cm across; convex, flatenning and developing a central depression and often a small umbo; smooth; slightly greasy; dark grey-brown when moist, turning paler in dry weather.
	Gills Sinuate; white, turning creamy-grey with age.
Stem	3 to 8cm long and 0.5 to 1cm dia.; base slightly bulbous; white, covered in grey-brown fibrils, densest towards base; no ring.
Spore print	Very pale cream.
Odour/taste	Not significant.
Habitat	On soil among leaf litter in all kinds of woods and forests.
Season	July to November.
Occurrence	Fairly common.
Similar species	More than thirty species in the Melanoleuca genus are recorded from Britain and Ireland, and most have brownish caps and white gills; separating them is a task for specialists. Many of them are very rare finds, whereas the Common Cavalier is by far the most widespread and abundant member of the group.

Reference Sources

Fascinated by Fungi, Pat O'Reilly 2011

Dictionary of the Fungi; Paul M. Kirk, Paul F. Cannon, David W. Minter and J. A. Stalpers; CABI, 2008

Taxonomic history and synonym information on these pages is drawn from many sources but in particular from the British Mycological Society's GB Checklist of Fungi and (for basidiomycetes) on Kew's Checklist of the British & Irish Basidiomycota.