Baby pink mushrooms which smell of radish

There’s a beautiful baby pink fungus on the Heath. I suspect it might be Mycena rosea, the Rosy Bonnet:

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

It’s hard to identify because there’s another species Mycena pura, the Lilac Bonnet, which appears to be almost identical in description but smaller and more fragile.

It smells of radish. It’s another poisonous fungus, containing small quantities of muscarine.

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

Muscarine will constrict your pupils, make you drool, give you blurred vision, make you sweat, fill your lungs with fluid, slow your heart rate, give you abdominal cramps with excess acid production, diarrhoea and make you produce excess urine. If it gets to your brain you may have tremors, convulsions and hypothermia. Asthma, shortage of breath and low blood pressure can mean death within 8 or 9 hours for 1 in 20 people. There is a simple antidote, called atropine, if you’re lucky enough to get it.

Please don’t eat anything you can’t reliably identify to species level. Thanks.

Feel free to leave a Reply :)