Echinoderma asperum

Description

Echinoderma asperum or Lepiota Aspera is a large, brownish, white-gilled mushroom, with a warty or scaly cap. It lives in woodland, or on bark chips in parks, and gardens.

Formerly included in the genus Lepiota, this dapperling appears in some field guides under its synonym Lepiota Ecinacea.

The edibility of this mushroom seems unknown and it has been shown to have adverse effects when consumed with alcohol so we don’t recommend consumption of this mushroom.

Common names: Freckled Dapperling.

Mushroom Identification

1. Cap

   The cap is tan/pale brown with dark brown pyramid scales especially concentrated in the middle. The cap starts convex but opens out flat to having upturned edges with age.

2. Gills

   White and very crowded and free from the stem. Young mushrooms have cotton veils covering the gills rather like a Cortinarius.

3. Stem

   The stem is off white to tan, smooth above the ring, sparsely covered in brown scales below.

4. Skirt

   Smooth and cotton-like on top with brown scales at the edge on the underside.

5. Flesh: White.

6. Spore Print: White. Dextrinoid.

7. Habitat

   Mainly deciduous woodland or on woodchips in parks or gardens. More frequent in Southern Britain.

History

First described by the eminent nineteenth-century mycologist Persoon as Agaricus asper, the freckled dapperling has been through several taxonomical name changes. Lucien Quélet moved it to genus Lepiota and since then it has long been known as (Pers.) Quel.

For a time it was placed with the other "spiny" Lepiota species into a separate sub-genus called Echinoderma, and in 1978 Marcel Bon put it into Cystolepiota.

Then in 1991 Bon created the new genus Echinoderma for this and similar brownish warty species, and the new name Echinoderma asperum is almost universally accepted in more recent publications.

The species name is the Latin adjective "asper" (with feminine: "aspera" and neuter "asperum"), meaning "rough".

This same species was described by Weinmann in 1824 as Agaricus acutesquamosus and by Wilhelm Gottfried Lasch in 1828 as Agaricus friesii, giving rise to corresponding synonyms in genera Lepiota and Echinoderma. Although most authorities now consider all these names to be synonyms, Moser separated the acutesquamosum form from the asperum form as different species, on the basis that the latter has forking gills and the former not.

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