Pholiota lucifera
Description
Pholiota lucifera is characterized by the drop-like appressed scales on the pileus, the stipe fibrillose-squamulose below the evanescent ring, and the bitter taste. This mushroom habitat on wood and woody debris, Europe, Summer-Fall.
Synonyms: Agaricus lucifer, Dryophila lucifera.
Mushroom Identification
Pileus
3-6 cm broad, convex, becoming more or less plane, at length umbonate, yellow, the disc somewhat ferruginous, viscid; with small, ferruginous-fulvous, adpressed, drop-like scales; margin appendiculate from veil remnants. Context whitish to yellowish, or yellow under the cuticle; taste bitter.
Lamellae
Adnate, yellow then bright rusty or ferruginous, close or crowded, rather narrow, edges at first white-crenulate. Stipe 2-5 cm long, 3-8 mm thick, yellowish above, brownish and fibrillose-squamulose below the peronate-fibrillose fugacious ring, equal, solid.
Spores
6.5-9 x 4.5-5.5 µ, smooth, no germ pore evident; shape in face view ovate to elliptic, in profile obscurely inequilateral to bean-shaped; color rusty cinnamon in KOH, in Melzer's reagent slightly redder, wall thin (-0.25 µ).
Basidia
26-32 x 6-7 µ, 4-spored, narrowly clavate, yellowish in KOH and Melzer's reagent. Pleurocystidia is rare and inconspicuous, 27-42 x 5-7 µ clavate-mucronate, (possibly merely basidioles). Cheilocystidia abundant, 28-60 x 5-12 µ elongate-clavate to capitate, rarely somewhat fusoid-ventricose or septate, hyaline thin-walled, smooth, yellowish in Melzer's reagent. Caulocystidia present as a few clavate end-cells arising from surface hyphae over apex.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: alg2115 (CC BY 4.0)
Photo 2 - Author: alg2115 (CC BY 4.0)
