Mycena vulgaris
Description
Mycena vulgaris is a small-sized mushroom belonging to the Mycena family.
Young mushrooms have a convex shape and transparent color, stripes are visible on their surface, have a gray-brown, gray-brown, pale, or grayish-fawn color. The fungus belongs to the category of litter saprotrophs, grows in groups, but the fruiting bodies do not grow together with each other.
Mycena vulgaris is mistakenly classified as inedible. It is not poisonous, and its use in food is not common because it is too small in size, which does not allow high-quality processing of the mushroom after collection.
The fruiting period of Mycena vulgaris begins at the end of summer and continues throughout the first half of autumn. You can meet the common mycena in mixed and coniferous forests, in the middle of fallen needles. The presented mycene species is widespread in Europe. Sometimes mycena can be found in North America and Asian countries.
This species is easily recognized among the Mycena by its combination of its overall glutinous fruitbody with grayish-brownish colors, adnate to decurrent lamellae, and a stipe with long whitish fibrils at the bottom. It has much the same ecology as M. rosella, yet these two are only distantly related, and we hope to be able to elucidate aspects of convergent evolution with the genome of this species.
Mycena vulgaris is listed in some countries in the Red Books. Among such countries are Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Latvia.
Common names: Common Mycena.
Mushroom Identification
Pileus
Up to 8.5 mm across, parabolical to convex, translucent-striate, glabrous, viscid, covered with a gelatinous, elastic, separable pellicle, at first blackish-gray to dark grey with a white margin, (or in some small specimens, entirely whitish), becoming slate grey with whitish margin.
Flesh
Thin, whitish.
Odor
Hardly distinctive, reminiscent of M. vulgaris.
Lamellae
14 – 15 reaching the stipe, arcuate, broadly adnate, decurrent with a tooth, fairly thick, white, the edge concolorous, concave, separable as an elastic-tough thread.
Stipe
Up to 40 x 1 mm, hollow, tenacious, terete, equal, straight to flexuous, glabrous, viscid, covered with a separable, gelatinous pellicle, at first black at the apex and dark grey farther below, finally grey to gray-brown, mostly with the apex blackish-gray, the base covered with long, coarse, flexuous, white fibrils.
Spore Print
White.
Basidia
23-30 x 5.5-7 µm, with sterigmata up to 4.5 µm long, 4-spored, clamped. Spores 7.4-8.2(-9) x 3.5- 4.5 µm, (narrowly) pip-shaped, smooth, amyloid Cheilocystidia forming a sterile band, clamped, embedded in gelatinous matter, cylindrical, terminated with much-branched gelatinizing excrescences. Pleurocystidia absent. Hyphae of the pileipellis embedded in gelatinous matter, smooth, with much-branched and diverticulate sidebranches.
Look-Alikes
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It has many subspecies, which have one common feature, namely, the yellowish color of a thin stem. In addition, mucous mycenes, as a rule, have large spores of 10 * 5 microns in size, the fungus has plates adhered to the pedicle.
Mycena rorida
Which is currently synonymous with Roridomyces dewy. This type of fungus prefers to grow on rotten wood of deciduous and coniferous trees. On its stem, there is a mucous sheath, and the spores are larger than those of mycene vulgaris. Their size is 8-12 * 4-5 microns. Basidia are only two-spore.
History
The Latin name for mycena vulgaris (Mycena vulgaris) comes from the Greek word mykes, which means mushroom, as well as the Latin species term vulgaris, which is translated as ordinary.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: Jerzy Opioła (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Photo 2 - Author: Arne Aronsen, Naturhistorisk museum, Universitetet i Oslo (CC BY-SA 3.0)
