Mycena diosma
Description
Mycena diosma is a species of аungi in the group Basidiomycota. It was described by German Joseph Krieglsteiner and Schwöbel in 1982. Mycena diosma belongs to the genus Mycena, and the family Mycenaceae.
It is one of the larger 'pink' mycenas which can be confusing, but this species has a distinctive smell of cedarwood at first and then of tobacco or even a cigar box. The cap is hygrophanous so it can throw a spanner in the works when it comes to identifying it as the cap can be shades of cream, lilac, purple and pink depending on how fresh, how wet, or how dry it is.
Mushroom Identification
Cap
15-45 mm across, campanulate, becoming shallowly conical, generally with a fairly small umbo and a raised concentric zone near the margin or halfway from the center, translucent-striate, strongly hygrophanous, smooth, glabrous, somewhat greasy-shiny when moist, at first dark brownish violet to reddish-violet (except at the umbo which is watery gray-violet or even ochraceous-tinted), fading to pale straw yellow-violet, pale grayish violet or pale grayish pink, with or without brownish shades, the umbo often becoming dingy whitish and contrasting with the concentric zone and the margin that retain their original color longer.
Gills
24-32(-36) reaching the stem, adnexed, smooth to veined, becoming dorsally intervenose, convex, dark brownish violet to reddish violet, turning more purplish brown to reddish-brown with age, slightly eroded, whitish.
Stem
40-80(-110) x 1.5-4.5(-6) mm, cylindrical, firm but brittle, equal for the greater part, somewhat broadened below, terete or somewhat compressed (and splitting lengthwise), smooth, pruinose to minutely puberulous at the very apex, glabrous and shiny farther down, concolorous with the young cap, with age becoming increasingly browner (pinkish-brown to dark brown), the base covered with long coarse, flexuous, yellowish fibrils.
Odor
Sweetish fragrant mixed with a component resembling the scent of a wooden cigar box (the mixture rather reminiscent of incense), but raphanoid when cut or bruised.
Taste
Raphanoid.
Spore Print
White.
Microscopic Features
Basidia 24-30 x 6.5-7 µm, slendely clavate, 4-spored, with sterigmata 5.5-7 µm long. Spores 7.4-9.8 x 3.6-5.4 µm, pip-shaped to somewhat irregularly shaped, smooth, amyloid. Cheilocystidia 22.5-60(-80) x 3.5-20 µm, forming a sterile band, clavate, fusiform or subcylindrical to more irregularly shaped, smooth. Pleurocystidia is scarce to seemingly absent, similar. Lamellar trama dextrinoid. Hyphae of the pileipellis 1.5-2.5 µm wide, smooth, not embedded in gelatinous matter. Hyphae of the cortical layer of the stem 1.5-3 µm wide, smooth, caulocystidia 3.5-10.5 µm wide, slender-clavate to cylindrical, smooth. Clamps are present in all elements.
Look-Alikes
Is similar and also occurs with Beech (Fagus) but is generally lighter in color and has a radish smell, not like Mycena diosma.
Is much larger and a brighter pink and also has a radish smell.
Is another species that could be found in the same habitat but again it has a radish smell and a distinctive black edge to the gills.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: Arne Aronsen, Naturhistorisk museum, Universitetet i Oslo (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 2 - Author: Míla Moudrá (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 3 - Author: Míla Moudrá (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 4 - Author: Míla Moudrá (CC BY-SA 3.0)
