Details about map content are available here Click on the map dots to view record details.
Species Information
Summary: The uniquely glutinous veil distinguishes this species from its lookalikes, but see also Stropharia semigloboides. Features include a viscid to slimy, yellow to yellow-brown cap that may be hemispheric, gills that are grayish, then dark purple-brown to black, a stem that is slender, viscid or slimy, white to yellowish, with a fragile fibrillose ring or zone, growth with dung, manure, straw, grazed or fertilized grass or rich soil, and a dark purple-brown spore deposit.
Stamets says it is widely distributed throughout North America and much of the temperate regions of the world. Murrill reported it from WA and CA. There are collections from BC and AB at the University of British Columbia, and a collection from OR at Oregon State University. The University of Washington has collections from WA, ID, AK, CA, MT, NY, and Australia. Breitenbach(4) gave the distribution as North America, Europe, Asia, North Africa, and Australia.
Cap: 1-5(6)cm across, hemispheric or broadly bell-shaped, becoming convex or rarely flat; pale yellow to straw-colored, yellowish buff, or yellow-brown, margin often paler; smooth, viscid or slimy when moist, margin "sometimes hung with whitish veil remnants"^, (Arora), occasionally with umbo, not hygrophanous, viscid to glutinous from separable gelatinous pellicle, (Stamets)
Flesh: thin; pale or watery yellowish^, (Arora), not bruising (Stamets)
Gills: typically adnate but sometimes separating; "at first grayish, then dark purple-brown to black", (Arora), adnate, broad, close to subdistant, with 1 to 2 tiers of subgills; gill edges remaining pale to whitish, (Stamets)
Stem: 5-8(13)cm x 0.2-0.6cm, typically long and slender, equal or slightly widened at base; white to yellowish; "somewhat fibrillose above the veil, viscid or slimy below (when moist)", (Arora), stuffed with yellowish pith at first becoming hollow when old, no bruising reaction, (Stamets), smooth above the ring (Breitenbach), pruinose above the ring (Desjardin)
Veil: "slimy, delicate, forming a fragile, superior, fibrillose ring or zone" on stem which is soon blackened by falling spores, cap margin sometimes hung with whitish veil remnants, (Arora)
Odor: none (Breitenbach), mealy (Lincoff), clean, spicy, like fenugreek, (Schalkwijk-Barendsen)
Microscopic spores: spores 15-19 x 7.5-10 microns, elliptic, smooth; chrysocystidia on gills, (Arora), spores 15-19 x 8-10 microns; basidia 4-spored; pleurocystidia difficult to find, 32-46 x 9-14 microns, cheilocystidia 26-38 x 6-9 microns, narrowly fusoid-ventricose with a long flexuous [wavy] neck, (Stamets), spores 15.6-20.1 x 8.3-11.6 microns, elliptic, "smooth gray-brown, thick-walled, with a germ pore"; basidia 4-spored, 33-41 x 12-15 microns, clavate or ventricose, without a basal clamp connection; pleurocystidia modified as chrysocystidia, 35-60 x 10-20 microns, "clavate to fusiform, some with an apical protrusion", cheilocystidia very abundant, 45-75 x 6-10 microns, narrowly fusiform-lageniform, ventricose towards base, with long neck, with rare interspersed fusiform-clavate chrysocystidia, 30 x 10 microns, or none; cap cuticle an ixocutis of +/- periclinal, gelatinized hyphae 2-5 microns wide, colorless, embedded in slimy material, septa with clamp connections; subcutis of periclinal hyphae 3-7 microns wide, with light yellow pigment and encrusted, septa with clamp connections, (Breitenbach)
Spore deposit: dark purple-brown to black (Arora), violet-black (Breitenbach)
Habitat / Range
single or in small groups on dung, manure, rich soil, straw, and grazed or fertilized grass, (Arora), on cow or horse dung, spring, summer, or fall, (Stamets)
Similar Species
Stropharia semigloboides has much paler gills and different spore characters, and differs in habitat. Stropharia coronilla has a shorter stem 2-5cm long which is not viscid, and a more prominent ring. Stropharia stercoraria is also similar or synonymous (see NOTES on that taxon). Protostropharia dorsipora is a very similar species that is more common in the Redwood coast of California than P. semiglobata - it "has a small, off-center germ pore" on the spore, whereas P. semiglobata "has a wide germ pore centrally positioned at the top of the spore", (Siegel(2)), Protostropharia alcis grows on moose dung, and has smaller and narrower spores with a relatively large germ pore, (Noordeloos(3)). Stropharia albonitens has a whitish or yellow tinged, often umbonate cap and a membranous but thin or evanescent veil. See also SIMILAR section of Agrocybe pediades, Agrocybe semiorbicularis, Psathyrella longistriata, Deconica coprophila, and Stropharia umbonatescens.
