Leratiomyces squamosus

What You Should Know

Leratiomyces squamosus is an inedible mushroom in the family Strophariaceae. This rare but gorgeous mushroom appears in eastern North America, decomposing woody debris on the forest floor under hardwoods or conifers. Leratiomyces squamosus var. thraustus has a sticky cap that is a beautiful shade of orange and, when young, is adorned with tattered white remnants of the partial veil. The ringed stem is shaggy with white scales and becomes brownish as the mushroom matures. Under the microscope, Leratiomyces squamosus var. thraustus lacks chrysocystidia but features abundant cheilo-leptocystidia.

This attractive little mushroom could easily be mistaken for Sulphur Tuft Hypholoma fasciculare, but it has a substantial and persistent stem ring.

Other names: Scaly Ringstalk, Slender Roundhead.

Leratiomyces squamosus Mushroom Identification

1. Ecology

   Saprobic; growing alone or gregariously on woody debris in hardwood and conifer forests; summer and fall; widely distributed in eastern North America, and documented from Washington and Utah; uncommon.

2. Cap

   2–5 cm; hemispheric at first, becoming broadly convex; sticky to slimy when fresh; bald; dull pinkish orange when young, maturing to bright orange; at first covered with a whitish, tissue-like covering that aggregates into scales as the cap expands; margin usually adorned with white partial veil remnants.

3. Gills

   Broadly attached to the stem; close or nearly distant; short-gills frequent; whitish to pale gray at first, becoming dark purplish gray; with whitish edges when mature.

4. Stem

   8–15 cm long; up to 1 cm thick; more or less equal; dry; with a ring that is grooved on its upper surface and is usually arched gracefully downwards and away from the stem; fairly bald above the ring, but densely scaly below; white at first, becoming brownish toward the base with maturity; base with white mycelial threads.

5. Flesh

   White, becoming brownish in the stem with age; not changing when sliced.

6. Odor and Taste

   Not distinctive.

7. Chemical Reactions

   KOH on cap surface olive to negative.

8. Spore Print

   Dark purple-blackish.

9. Microscopic Features

   Spores 10–14 x 5–7 µm; ellipsoid; with a small pore; smooth; thick-walled; yellow-brown in KOH. Basidia 4-spored. Cheilocystidia as leptocystidia; 65–100 x 3–5 µm; cylindric-flexuous with rounded or subacute apices; smooth; hyaline to yellowish in KOH; thin-walled. Pleurocystidia not found. Pileipellis an ixocutis above a subcellular subpellis; orangish brown in KOH.

10. Similar Species

    Sulphur Tuft Hypholoma fasciculare often has veil fragments near the cap rim, but they are darker; it also lacks a stem ring.

Leratiomyces squamosus Taxonomy and Etymology

When in 1888 British mycologists Mordecai Cubitt Cooke and George Edward Massee (1850 - 1917) described this species, they gave it the binomial scientific name Agaricus squamosus.

In 2008 Brian Spooner and colleagues established the currently-accepted scientific name of this mushroom as Leratiomyces squamosus.

This genus name originated in 1907 when Narcisse Théophile Patouillard created the name Le Ratia (which he applied to a puffball fungus) in honor of French botanist and plant collector Auguste-Joseph Le Rat (1872 - 1910), who on various occasions had provided Patouillard with fungal specimens that he had collected. From this origin, Spooner and colleagues derived the new genus name Leratiomyces.

The specific epithet squamosus is a reference to the cherry red color of caps.

Synonyms

1. Agaricus squamosus

2. Geophila squamosa

3. Hypholoma squamosum

4. Naematoloma squamosum

5. Psalliota squamosa

6. Psilocybe squamosa

7. Stropharia squamosa

8. Stropholoma squamosum

Sources:

Photo 1 - Author: Jason Hollinger (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

Photo 2 - Author: Jason Hollinger (jason) (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

Photo 3 - Author: Ann B. (Ann F. Berger) (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

Photo 4 - Author: Jason Hollinger (jason) (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

Photo 5 - Author: Björn S. (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)