Yellowleg Bonnet

We find a delicate mushroom on our fungus foray. That’s a relief, because this mushroom season has been very poor, with the wrong mix of temperature and rainfall leading to many fungi giving this autumn a miss.

It’s growing on rotting wood:

Mycena epipterygia - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)

It has yellow on its stem. When someone picks it and takes it to an expert from our group they say it’s the Yellowleg Bonnet, Mycena epipterygia:

Mycena epipterygia - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)

The description is perfect; it’s also got a special feature of a sticky elastic skin which covers the stem and can be pulled out into little wings.

Mycena epipterygia - The Hall of Einar

It’s a fabulous fungus.

Here it is in L. Dufour’s Atlas des champignons comestibles et vénéneux published in Paris in 1891:

Mycena epipterygia - The Hall of Einar-
Atlas des champignons comestibles et vénéneux
Paris, P. Klincksieck,1891.

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