Entoloma incanum
Description
Entoloma incanum is one of the few small grassland pink gills that can be identified in the field with confidence. It has the greenish stem and an odor reminiscent of caged mice. It fades quickly, and is often found looking brownish or yellowish, and fairly drab. Cap color is an unreliable identification character because some are yellow, others grayish-brown, greenish-brown, or in some cases bluish-brown.
If your mushroom is green but smells like ouzo or black licorice instead of mice, it's probably Clitocybe odora.
Entoloma incanum is a toxic toadstool and is not to be collected for eating.
Common names: Mousepee Pinkgill.
Mushroom Identification
Ecology
Saprobic; growing alone, scattered, or gregariously under hardwoods or conifers in woods - or grassy areas, moss, leaf litter, or disturbed soil (ditches, paths, road beds, and so on); summer and fall; fairly widely distributed east of the Great Plains, and documented once by Largent (1994) in Idaho.
Cap
1-5 cm; convex with a central depression or a "navel"; dry to greasy; bald or finely silky; yellow-green becoming deep green, then fading to greenish, yellowish, or brownish; the margin becoming lined.
Gills
Attached to the stem; nearly distant; at first whitish or colored like the cap, becoming pink with maturity; bruising green to blue-green.
Stem
2-6 cm long; 1-4 mm thick; more or less equal; dry or greasy; bald; hollow; colored like the cap, or more brightly colored; bruising darker green to blue-green; basal mycelium white.
Flesh
Thin; fragile; yellowish to greenish; darkening to dark green or blue-green when bruised.
Odor and Taste
The odor of mice; taste not distinctive.
Spore Print
Pink.
Microscopic Features
Spores 7-12 x 5-8 µ; mostly 6-sided; heterodiametric; inamyloid. Hymenial cystidia absent. Pileipellis a cutis of elements 5-10 µ wide; pigment intracellular; occasional clavate cystidioid terminal elements 33-63 x 8-12 µ. Clamp connections absent.
History
When in 1821 Elias Magnus Fries described this species he gave it the scientific (binomial) name Agaricus incanus.
It was American Mycologist Lexemuel Ray Hesler (1888 - 1977) who, in 1967, transferred this species to its present genus, whereupon its scientific name became Entoloma incanum.
Synonyms of Entoloma incanum include Agaricus murinus Sowerby, Agaricus incanus Fr., Agaricus sowerbyi Berk., Agaricus euchlorus Lasch, Leptonia euchlora (Lasch) P. Kumm., Leptonia incana (Fr.) Gillet, and Leptonia incana var. citrina D.A. Reid.
The generic name Entoloma comes from ancient Greek words entos, meaning inner, and lóma, meaning a fringe or a hem. It is a reference to the inrolled margins of many of the mushrooms in this genus.
The specific epithet incanum comes from the Latin adjective incanus, which means grey or hoary.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: Jack Smith (Mushroom) (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 2 - Author: Andreas Kunze (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 3 - Author: zaca (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 4 - Author: Holger Krisp (CC BY 3.0)
Photo 5 - Author: Andreas Kunze (CC BY-SA 3.0)
