Mycena metata

What You Should Know

Mycena metata is a species of fungus in the family Mycenaceae found in Europe. It is inedible. Cap is brown to pale brown or grayish brown, darker, and often with a pink shade at the center. Grow in groups in mossy lawns, under both conifers and deciduous trees, on fallen twigs and other vegetable debris.

M. metata is closely related to Mycena filopes, and both species are very common, but they have different (though overlapping) phenology. M. filopes is most abundant from summer to early autumn and ceases completely to appear when it starts freezing, while M. metata has its peak abundance later in the autumn and can survive and grow into the early winter season.

Other names: The Frost Bonnet.

Mycena metata Mushroom Identification

1. Cap

   5-25 mm across, narrowly to broadly conical or campanulate, sulcate, translucent-striate, pruinose, glabrescent, fairly dark brown to pale brown or grayish brown, darker and often with a pink shade at the center.

2. Gills

   13-24 reaching the stem, ascending, narrowly adnate, white to pale gray, often turning pale brownish flesh-color to dingy pink.

3. Stem

   25-90 x 1-2 mm, hollow, terete, equal, straight to curved, fragile, pruinose, glabrescent, whitish or gray to gray-brown, usually darker in lower parts, the base densely covered with long, white fibrils.

4. Odor

   Iodine when drying (best experienced after having been kept in a box for a while).

5. Microscopic Features

   Basidia 24-35 x 7-10 μm, clavate, 2-spored and 4-spored, clamped. Spores 8-12.5(-14.5) x 5-6.3 μm (from 2-spored basidia) or 8.5-11.8 x 4.5-6.5 μm (from 4-spored basidia), pip-shaped, smooth, amyloid. Cheilocystidia 18-76 x 9-27 μm, forming a sterile band, cylindrical, clavate, obpyriform, obovoid, spheropenduculate, or less frequently somewhat irregularly shaped, mostly stipitate (but sometimes sessile), clamped, covered with mostly evenly spaced warts or straight to curved or flexuous, cylindrical excrescences up to 12.5 μm long. Pleurocystidia similar. Lamellar trama dextrinoid. Hyphae of the pileipellis 2-5.5 μm wide, diverticulate, covered with simple to branched excrescences, often forming dense, coralloid masses. Hyphae of the cortical layer of the stipe 2-4.5 μm wide, diverticulate, with excrescences 1-10 x 1-2 μm, terminal cells absent or rare.

Mycena metata Synonyms

1. Agaricus laevigatus Pers. (1801)

2. Agaricus metatus Fr. (1821)

3. Agaricus metatus var. laevigatus (Pers.) Fr. (1821)

4. Mycena filopes var. metata (Fr.) Arnolds (1982)

Sources:

Photo 1 - Author: Sava Krstic (sava) (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

Photo 2 - Author: Jerzy Opioła (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

Photo 3 - Author: James K. Lindsey (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic)

Photo 4 - Author: James Lindsey (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic)