Hygrophorus pudorinus
Description
Hygrophorus pudorinus is a species of fungus in the genus Hygrophorus. It is recognized by a robust stature, pinkish, viscid cap, pinkish-tinged adnate to subdecurrent gills, and stipe with a bright yellow base. It is found in coniferous woodlands under fir and spruce trees across western and northeastern North America; it is particularly common in Canada and the Rocky Mountains. The mushrooms appear in groups or fairy rings in late summer and autumn. They often grow in boggy places in sphagnum moss.
Despite its taste, it is edible after cooking. Its variable appearance makes identification difficult and hence raises the risk of misidentification.
Common names: Blushing Waxycap, Turpentine Waxycap.
Mushroom Identification
Ecology
Mycorrhizal with spruces and other conifers; growing scattered to gregariously; late summer and fall; fairly widely distributed in western North America from Colorado to the West Coast, and found in central and northeastern North America from about the Great Lakes northward.
Cap
3-10 cm; convex, becoming broadly convex or broadly bell-shaped; sticky when fresh, but soon dry and shiny; bald or, in age, developing fine scales and cracks; pale pinkish-orange (very similar to the color of Albatrellus confluence) or pinkish tan; the margin at first inrolled and cottony.
Gills
Broadly attached to the stem or beginning to run down it; close or nearly distant; white, unchanging or becoming yellowish to pinkish with age; short-gills frequent.
Stem
3-8 cm long; up to 3 cm thick; more or less equal above a tapered base that is often underground; dry; finely dotted with tiny white tufts of fibers toward the apex that turn reddish-brown when specimens are dried; whitish, often turning yellowish were handled or near the base; thick.
Flesh
Firm; white, or slightly pinkish to yellowish or orangish in the stem base; unchanging or turning slightly yellowish.
Odor and Taste
The odor often soapy and fragrant or slightly unpleasant - or not distinctive; taste mild.
Spore Print
White.
Chemical Reactions
KOH golden orange on cap and stem surface.
Microscopic Features
Spores 7-10 x 4-5.5 µ; smooth; ellipsoid; hyaline in KOH; inamyloid. Basidia 4-sterigmate; to about 55 µ long. Hymenial cystidia absent. Lamellar trama divergent. Pileipellis an ixocutis or an ixotrichoderm.
History
Swedish mycologist Elias Magnus Fries described it as Agaricus pudorinus in his 1821 work Systema Mycologicum. It became Hygrophorus pudorinus with the raising of Hygrophorus to genus rank. The species name is the Latin word pudorinus "blushing".
The species is classified in the subsection Pudorini of genus Hygrophorus, along with the closely related species H. erubescens and H. purpurascens.
Actually, according to Lodge and collaborators (2013), Hygrophorus pudorinus is a generally misapplied name: "The type species of H. pudorinus Fr. matches H. persicolor Ricek, but the name has been misapplied to H. abieticola. The North American taxon called H. 'pudorinus' appears in a sister clade to H. persicolor in our ITS analysis . . so it is close to the original concept of H. pudorinus."
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: Holger Krisp (CC BY 3.0)
Photo 2 - Author: Holger Krisp (CC BY 3.0)
Photo 3 - Author: Raphaël Blo. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
