Mycena cyanorrhiza
Description
Mycena cyanorrhiza is a small white mushroom that has blue colors. Unlike hallucinogenic mushrooms, the blue color is not related to psilocin polymerization. It grows in forests on wood and has a white spore print.
This mushroom is a member of sect. Viscipelles Kühner. The blue base of the stipe is a striking feature of Mycena cyanorrhiza, but also in M. amicta (Fr.) Quél. a blue base can be seen.
Several features are separating the two species. In M. amicta the lamellar edge is not formed by a tough thread, 17 - 25 lamellae are reaching the stipe, the spores are broader, and the cheilocystidia are completely different. M. amicta usually is a larger species, with darker colours, and with a conspicuously white-pubescent stipe. The base of the stipe usually is somewhat blue-green, but sometimes it can be entirely blue.
Occasionally the blue color apparently can be absent in Mycena cyanorrhiza.
Mushroom Identification
Pileus
2–5(-10) mm across, covered with a (separable), gelatinous pellicle, at first globose, then hemispherical to parabolical, becoming convex, sometimes centrally somewhat depressed, but also with a small papilla, translucent-striate, sulcate, pruinose, glabrescent, somewhat lubricous, initially pale brown, then pale grey with darker center, becoming white with age.
Lamellae
9–14 reaching the stipe, ascending, sometimes fairly broad and sometimes more narrow, narrowly adnate to fairly broadly adnate or almost free, sometimes with a pseudocollarium, whitish or pale grey with a whitish edge which is separable as an elastc-tough thread.
Stipe
5-30(-70) x 0.5-1 mm, flexuous, terete, hollow, equal except for the base which is usually somewhat bulbous, entirely puberulous, glabrescent in the middle part, pale grey to hyaline-white; the base hirsute, sky blue (also in the flesh), springing from a patch of fine, radiating, white fibrils.
Basidia
18-25 x 6.5-11 µm, clavate, 4-spored, with sterigmata 5-8 µm long. Spores 6.5-9 x 4-5 µm, Q = 1.6-2.2, Qav ≈ 1.8, pip-shaped to somewhat elongated, smooth, amyloid. Cheilocystidia 9-20 x 5.5-7 µm, embedded in gelatinous matter, clavate to obpyriform, with few, simple to branched excrescences 3-14 x 1-1.5 µm.
Pleurocystidia
Absent. Lamellar trama dextrinoid, vinescent in Melzer's reagent. Hyphae of the pileipellis 1.5-3.5 µm wide, embedded in gelatinous matter, very branched, covered with scattered, simple to branched excrescences, protruding through the gelatinous layer.
Hyphae of the cortical layer of the stipe 1-3 µm wide, smooth, with caulocystidia up to 60 x 7 µm, simple to furcate or somewhat branched. Clamp connections present at all tissues.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: alekseyfaraway (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Photo 2 - Author: pacovillalonga (CC BY-NC 4.0)
