Cortinarius armillatus
Description
Cortinarius armillatus is a medium or large agaric that has a rust-brown, bell-shaped, fibrous cap, rust gills, and reddish belts on a stem with a swollen base. It grows typically in moist coniferous forests, especially spruced ones in the late summer and autumn (as late as in October) fungus is usually found in moist coniferous forests, especially spruced ones.
This mushroom is considered either edible but mediocre or inedible. The fruit body has been found to contain orellanine, though at much lower concentrations than the lethal webcaps.
When dyeing cloths, without added metals, it discharges pink, with tin yellow, with copper green, and with iron olive dyes.
Common names: Red-banded Cortinarius.
Mushroom Identification
Ecology
Mycorrhizal with birch; growing alone, scattered, or gregariously; summer and fall; widely distributed in northern North America.
Cap
5-15 cm; convex or bell-shaped, becoming broadly convex, broadly bell-shaped, or nearly flat; dry; bald, finely hairy, or very finely scaly over the center at maturity; yellow-brown to reddish-brown, often with a deeper, brick red center; sometimes fading to dull tan.
Gills
Attached to the stem; close or nearly distant; pale dirty yellowish to pale cinnamon at first, becoming rusty brown with maturity; covered by a whitish cortina when young.
Stem
7-15 cm long; up to 2.5 cm thick; swollen at the base; dry; bald or finely silky; whitish to pale brownish; encircled by 2-4 orange-red, concentric bands; with a rusty ring zone above the bands; basal mycelium whitish.
Flesh
Whitish to pale brownish.
Odor
Not distinctive, or radishlike.
Chemical Reactions
KOH on black on cap surface; purple on orange areas of the stem.
Spore Print
Rusty brown.
Microscopic Features
Spores 9-12 x 5-7 µ; ellipsoid; finely warty; moderately to strongly dextrinoid; with thick (about .75 µ) walls. Cheilo- and pleurocystidia absent. Pileipellis a cutis.
Similar Species
Although lacking the distinctive orange bands on the stem, several common webcaps resemble Cortinarius armillatus. Among these are Cortinarius bolaris, which is poisonous, and Cortinarius rubellus which is deadly poisonous.
History
Cortinarius armillatus was originally described in 1818 by the great Swedish mycologist Elias Magnus Fries, who named it Agaricus armillatus. In 1938 Elias Fries transferred this species to the genus Cortinarius, where it has resided to the present day.
Synonyms of Cortinarius armillatus include Agaricus armillatus Fr. and Cortinarius haematochelis sensu Cooke.
The generic name Cortinarius is a reference to the partial veil or cortina (meaning a curtain) that covers the gills when caps are immature. In the genus Cortinarius most species produce partial veils in the form of a fine web of radial fibres connecting the stem to the rim of the cap.
The specific epithet armillatus means 'wearing bracelets' or 'wearing collars' - in this instance the reddish veil girdles around the stem of this mushroom.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: Jerzy Opioła (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Photo 2 - Author: Tatiana Bulyonkova from Novosibirsk, Russia (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Photo 3 - Author: Jimmie Veitch (jimmiev) (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 4 - Author: Jason Hollinger (jason) (CC BY-SA 3.0)
