Fungi (Stropharia caerulea)
Stropharia caerulea is one of very few blue-green fungi. (In most instances the caps are much nearer to green than to blue, but when young and fresh they are very beautiful and quite startling.) The caps, initially bell-shaped, flatten and turn paler from the centre. White scales near the cap rim help to identify this unusual fungus.
Blue Roundhead mushrooms are an occasional find and very localised in Britain and Ireland, occurring mainly in alkaline areas of humus-rich Beech woodland. These striking mushrooms are found throughout mainland Europe - Sweden, France, Portugal and Slovenia - and they are also recorded in parts of North America.
Although this blue mushroom has been known to science for more than two centuries, its separation from Stropharia aeruginosa had not been clearly defined until, in 1979, the German mycologist Hanns Kreisel (b. 1931) published a paper in Sydowia (an international Mycological journal produced in Austria), which established its currently-accepted scientific name Stropharia caerulea.
Stropharia, the genus name, comes from the Greek word strophos meaning a belt, and it is a reference to the stem rings of fungi in this generic grouping. The specific epithet caerulea means blue, and often it refers to a deep blue rather than the blue-green colouring of the cap
Young caps are bell-shaped, blue-green and slimy, peppered with small white veil fragments. Older specimens, like the one illustrated here, are paler and scaly mainly near the rim of the cap, which expands but does not completely flatten out. In sunlight the slime dries up on older caps, which gradually turn pale tan from the centre outwards. The cap diameter at maturity usually ranges between 2 and 8cm.
At first pale grey, the crowded sinuate (notched near to the stem) gills become purple-brown as the spores mature. (The gills of the rarer Verdigris Roundhead, Stropharia aeruginosa are adnate or only slightly notched, and the gill edges of that species remain white as the gill faces mature and turn brown.)
Whitish above the ring, which is transient and soon discoloured brown by falling spores; slightly more obvious pale blue-green below the ring zone and peppered with small white scales. 5 to 12 mm in diameter and 2 to 6cm tall.
In the picture on the left, which shows of the stem and ring zone of a mature fruitbody, the stem ring has almost vanished apart from a slight annular bulge highlighted by brown spore stain.
Fungi (Stropharia caerulea)
Stropharia caerulea is one of very few blue-green fungi. (In most instances the caps are much nearer to green than to blue, but when young and fresh they are very beautiful and quite startling.) The caps, initially bell-shaped, flatten and turn paler from the centre. White scales near the cap rim help to identify this unusual fungus.
Blue Roundhead mushrooms are an occasional find and very localised in Britain and Ireland, occurring mainly in alkaline areas of humus-rich Beech woodland. These striking mushrooms are found throughout mainland Europe - Sweden, France, Portugal and Slovenia - and they are also recorded in parts of North America.
Although this blue mushroom has been known to science for more than two centuries, its separation from Stropharia aeruginosa had not been clearly defined until, in 1979, the German mycologist Hanns Kreisel (b. 1931) published a paper in Sydowia (an international Mycological journal produced in Austria), which established its currently-accepted scientific name Stropharia caerulea.
Stropharia, the genus name, comes from the Greek word strophos meaning a belt, and it is a reference to the stem rings of fungi in this generic grouping. The specific epithet caerulea means blue, and often it refers to a deep blue rather than the blue-green colouring of the cap
Young caps are bell-shaped, blue-green and slimy, peppered with small white veil fragments. Older specimens, like the one illustrated here, are paler and scaly mainly near the rim of the cap, which expands but does not completely flatten out. In sunlight the slime dries up on older caps, which gradually turn pale tan from the centre outwards. The cap diameter at maturity usually ranges between 2 and 8cm.
At first pale grey, the crowded sinuate (notched near to the stem) gills become purple-brown as the spores mature. (The gills of the rarer Verdigris Roundhead, Stropharia aeruginosa are adnate or only slightly notched, and the gill edges of that species remain white as the gill faces mature and turn brown.)
Whitish above the ring, which is transient and soon discoloured brown by falling spores; slightly more obvious pale blue-green below the ring zone and peppered with small white scales. 5 to 12 mm in diameter and 2 to 6cm tall.
In the picture on the left, which shows of the stem and ring zone of a mature fruitbody, the stem ring has almost vanished apart from a slight annular bulge highlighted by brown spore stain.