Mycena filopes
Description
Mycena filopes have a convex cap, expanding with age, lined, gray-brown, margin whitish, to about 2 cm across. The stem is slender, grayish, sometimes with white hairs at the base.
Common names: Iodine Bonnet.
Mushroom Identification
Ecology
Saprobic on terrestrial forest debris in both hardwood and conifer forests; usually growing gregariously but sometimes found growing scattered or even solitary; fall (or overwinter in warmer climates); widely distributed, at least as a species group, in North America.
Cap
Up to 2.5 cm across; conical to broadly conical, sometimes becoming bell-shaped; dry; when young with a hoary sheen, but often more or less bald at maturity; pale grayish brown, fading to grayish with a slightly darker center; the margin lined nearly to the center.
Gills
Attached to the stem by a tooth; close or nearly distant; whitish or pale grayish.
Stem
5-12 cm long; 1-3 mm thick; fragile in age; equal; hollow; finely hoary at first, but soon bald; pale above and brownish to grayish below, but sometimes with faint bluish or lilac shades; basal mycelium hairy and white.
Flesh
Insubstantial; pallid or grayish.
Odor and Taste
The odor usually of iodine but sometimes only weakly so, or not distinctive; taste not distinctive.
Spore Print
White.
Microscopic Features
Spores 7-11 x 5-7 µ; weakly to moderately amyloid; elliptical; smooth. Basidia 2- or 4-spored. Cheilocystidia abundant; up to 25 x 15 µ; saccate, with numerous spine-like projections over the apex. Pleurocystidia absent. Pileipellis a cutis, with the uppermost elements diverticulate to verrucose.
Look-Alikes
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Pileus surface either not rimose or without apparent texture, without silvery lustre, pileus and/or lamellae usually becoming tinged with pink.
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Also very similar mushroom.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: Jerzy Opioła (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Photo 2 - Author: Sava Krstic (sava) (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 3 - Author: Jerzy Opioła (CC BY-SA 4.0)
