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Species Information
Summary: First placed in Agaricus, this mushroom has found a home in Geophila, Psilocybe, and Galerina before being designated Mythicomyces. Features include 1) a hygrophanous, orange-brown, moist, shiny, striate cap, 2) tawny to yellowish cap flesh, 3) close, broad gills that are pallid to whitish becoming brownish, 4) a shiny, cartilaginous to horny stem that is yellowish to tawny, dark reddish brown below and blackening from the base upward, 5) tawny basal mycelium, 6) a pale purplish brown spore deposit, and 7) microscopic characters including roughened spores and thick-walled cystidia. Arora(1) says it is "especially common in the Pacific Northwest", but Redhead(14) says "rare to uncommon in North America and is most commonly found in the Pacific Northwest"
Collections were examined from BC, WA, OR, ID, NS, ON, CO, NY, and Sweden, (Redhead(14)).
Cap: 1-3cm across, obtusely conic with inrolled margin at first, becoming bell-shaped or broadly convex, if umbonate umbo is obtuse to conic; hygrophanous, orange to orange-brown becoming ochraceous tawny: in Ridgway(1) colors "apricot orange" to "tawny" when young, at maturity "ochraceous tawny", fading first around disc to "zinc orange" or finally "ochraceous buff", or in colors from Rayner(2), 'apricot' or 'ochreous' when young at maturity 'fulvous', fading; moist, bald and polished, margin translucent-striate, (Redhead)
Flesh: firm; watery tawny fading to yellowish, (Redhead)
Gills: rounded adnate to adnexed and soon seceding, close, 2 tiers of subgills, gills broad; pallid to whitish becoming ''hazel'' (color from Rayner(2)), (Redhead)
Stem: 3-5.7cm x 0.1-0.2cm, equal or slightly enlarged in upper part, usually strict [straight], cartilaginous to horny, round in cross-section; yellowish, pale orange, or finally dull tawny or ochreous at top, dark reddish brown in lower part and blackening from base upward; top faintly pruinose, base of stem sometimes with tawny to chestnut hairs, basal mycelium tawny, (Redhead)
Veil: none (Smith)
Odor: not distinctive to faintly geranium-like, (Redhead)
Taste: not distinctive or faintly bitter (Redhead)
Microscopic spores: spores 6-8.5 x 4-5.5 microns, oval to subelliptic [more or less elliptic] in face view, to slightly inequilateral in side view, often with one "oil drop", punctate under light microscope with short ridges and projections, apex not truncate, spores pale grayish brown with a vinaceous tinge in 2% KOH or many colorless to only pale pink in material from dried caps; basidia 4-spored, 24-26 x 6-8.5 microns, clavate, with clamp connection; pleurocystidia abundant, 43-86 x 10-24 microns, fusoid-ventricose with obtuse apices that are sometimes incrusted with prominent colorless crystals, walls of pleurocystidia up to 3 microns thick and pale brown to colorless; cheilocystidia similar but shorter, 37-46 x 10.5-14 microns; cap cuticle a thin, gelatinized ixocutis of radially arranged filamentous hyphae 1-4 microns wide, with thin, smooth to vaguely incrusted walls; clamp connections mentioned for basidia, cap trama, stem hyphae, and (infrequent) basal mycelium, (Redhead)
Spore deposit: pale purplish brown ("benzo-brown" Ridgway(1) color), (Redhead)
Habitat / Range
gregarious along margins of bogs among mosses or on wet soil under conifers and alders, (Redhead)
Similar Species
Stagnicola perplexa has a milky coffee spore print instead of pale purplish brown, and has smooth spores and thin-walled cheilocystidia, (Redhead(14)). Psilocybe species are similar but Mythicomyces corneipes has rough spores and a combination of other unusual features: horny stem, tawny basal mycelium, relatively pale spore deposit, and lack of a germ pore, (Redhead(14)). Phaeocollybia species are similar but Mythicomyces corneipes has a non-rooting stem and tawny basal mycelium, (Redhead(14)). See also SIMILAR section of Phaeocollybia attenuata.
