Gymnopilus braendlei

🏷️ Description

Gymnopilus braendlei is a small and colorful mushroom that features a cap transitioning from purplish-vinaceous to yellow with possible green stains and a pink-staining, hollow stem. Its ocherous-orange spore print and bitter taste further distinguish it. Found on dead wood in the U.S. from June to November, Gymnopilus braendlei is psychoactive, containing psilocybin and psilocin. Handle responsibly! 🌟

📚 Synonym: Flammula braendlei Peck (1904).

🔎 Identification

🧢 Cap:

• Size: 0.98 to 1.97 inches (2.5 to 5 cm), starting hemispheric and becoming convex.

• Color: Initially vinaceous or purplish, transitioning to pinkish hues with lighter margins, then yellowish as it ages. Greenish stains may appear.

• Texture: Fibrillose, sometimes squamulose near the center. Margin starts in-rolled and becomes irregular. Flesh is thin, whitish to pink, staining green in spots.

🍃 Gills:

• Attachment: Adnate to sinuate, sometimes with a short decurrent tooth.

• Color: Whitish when young, progressing to light yellow, then ocherous orange or tawny with rust spotting as they mature.

• Characteristics: Close and broad, with a fimbriate edge. A cortinate white partial veil is present in young specimens but disappears quickly.

🍄 Stem:

• Size: 0.98 to 1.57 inches (2.5 to 4 cm) long, 3–7 mm thick, tapering towards a sub-bulbous yellow base.

• Color: Starts pink, turns yellow from the base upward, retaining pink at the apex.

• Texture: Covered with brown, appressed fibrils below, and white fibrils above. Flesh whitish, staining pink in immature specimens. Apex darkens dramatically when damaged.

• Structure: Stuffed to hollow, with no persistent annulus.

🎨 Bruising:

• Displays striking green or blue bruising at the base and on the cap, with green spots on the pileus likely.

🔬 Microscopic Features:

• Spores: 6 x 8.5 x 4.5–5 μm, ellipsoid to ovoid, dextrinoid, verruculose, with no germ pore.

• Pleurocystidia: 22–33 x 6–7 μm.

• Cheilocystidia: 20–34 x 3–7 μm.

• Clamp connections present.

🌍 Habitat and Distribution:

• Found on dead hardwoods and possibly conifers, growing solitary, gregariously, or in small clusters.

• Season: June to November.

• Distribution: Widespread in the eastern U.S., also present in the western U.S.

💡 Key Notes:

• Taste: Bitter.

• Spore Print: Orangish brown.

• Contains psilocybin and psilocin, contributing to its psychoactive properties.

• Originally described by Charles Horton Peck in 1902 as Flammula braendlei.

Photo source: Rocky Houghtby (CC BY-SA 3.0)