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Species Information
Summary: {See also Blue-green Stropharia Table.} Stropharia aeruginosa is identified by a viscid, greenish to blue-green or yellow-green cap and a brown-violet spore deposit, but it is not easy to distinguish from the two less common species, Stropharia pseudocyanea and S. caerulea (see SIMILAR). Noordeloos in 1995 transferred this species to Psilocybe along with Stropharia caerulea and Stropharia pseudocyanea.
It has been reported specifically for BC (Bandoni(1). There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia), collections from OR at Oregon State University, collections from ID at Boise State University, and collections from WA, AK, and CO at the University of Washington. Breitenbach(4) give the distribution as North America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa.
Cap: 2-6(8)cm across, broadly bell-shaped to convex becoming broadly umbonate or nearly flat; bright green to blue-green when fresh, developing yellow tones when old; "viscid when moist, smooth or with a few whitish scales (veil remnants) near margin", (Arora), 2-8cm across, convex to bell-shaped, soon broadly convex, often with low broad umbo; dark bluish green, sometimes fading when mature; viscid when wet and covered with a bluish green, separable gelatinous pellicle, margin adorned with whitish flecks (partial veil remnants), (Stamets), 2.5-4.5(7)cm, "blue-green when young, fading to yellow-green to pale yellow-light ocher when old"; slimy when moist, viscid when dry, covered with white flocci especially when young, cuticle peelable, (Breitenbach), margin hung with veil remnants (Phillips)
Flesh: soft; white or tinged blue, (Arora), thin, thicker toward center; whitish, (Stamets), white, blue-green toward base of stem, (Breitenbach)
Gills: "typically more or less adnate (but may secede), fairly close"; at first pallid but soon grayish, finally purple-brown or chocolate brown, (Arora), adnate, broad; fawn to clay brown, sometimes tinged purplish, with white edges, (Stamets), broadly adnate, 32-38 reaching stem, broad, 5-7 subgills between neighboring gills; "pink-white when young, later lilac-cream to lilac-brown"; "edges slightly undulating, distinctly white-floccose", (Breitenbach)
Stem: 3-8cm x 0.3-0.8(1.2)cm, more or less equal; pallid above ring, colored like cap or paler below; often slightly viscid when moist, smooth above ring, usually with small cottony scales below ring, (Arora), 3-8cm x 0.3-1.2cm, equal, flared toward top and swollen at base; nearly colored as cap; surface covered with whitish patches, (Stamets), 4-7.5(10)cm x 0.4-1cm, cylindric, base sometimes widened, solid to hollow, rigid, fragile; blue to blue-green; above the ring finely tomentose-fibrillose, below the ring coarsely tomentose with erect, whitish, fibrillose scales, when old becoming bald; ring fibrillose-membranous, when old with a faint ring zone; base often white-tomentose, with white mycelium, (Breitenbach)
Veil: "membranous, white, soft, forming a fragile, superior ring" which often disappears when old, (Arora), partial veil membranous, leaving a fragile, membranous, superior ring that is whitish on upper side and bluish green on lower side, sometimes disappearing when old, (Stamets), cap margin fibrillose from white veil remnants, ring fibrillose-membranous, when old with a faint ring zone, (Breitenbach)
Odor: not distinctive (Phillips), fungoid (Miller)
Taste: not distinctive (Phillips), indistinct or with a slightly bitter aftertaste, (Noordeloos)
Microscopic spores: spores 6-10 x 4-5 microns, elliptic, smooth; chrysocystidia present on gills, (Arora), spores 7.5-9 x 4.5-5 microns, elliptic, thick-walled with a central germ pore; pleurocystidia 40-60 x 10-15 microns, mucronate [tipped with an abrupt short point], clavate, cheilocystidia 40-55 x 10-12.5 microns, lageniform-capitate and bluntly capitate, (Stamets), spores 6.5-9.2 x 3.9-5.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, gray-yellow, thick-walled, some with germ pore; basidia 4-spored, 26-30 x 6.5-7.5 microns, cylindric-clavate, some with basal clamp connection; pleurocystidia modified as chrysocystidia, 30-55 x 9-16 microns, fusiform-lageniform or ventricose, with apical protrusion, cheilocystidia abundant, 30-56 x 9-14 microns, clavate, with very occasional interspersed lageniform chrysocystidia; cap cuticle an ixocutis of periclinal to ascending hyphae 3-6 microns wide, colorless, in part encrusted, all embedded in slimy material; clamp connections mentioned for cap cuticle and basidia, (Breitenbach)
Spore deposit: dark purple-brown to purple-black (Arora) dark vinaceous purple-brown to purple-black (Stamets), brown-violet (Breitenbach), gray to chocolate-brown or blackish brown
Habitat / Range
single or in small groups" in rich soil, humus, woody debris, or grass, (Arora), "on wood debris, in gardens, parks, and occasionally along grassy areas at the edge of woodlands", in Pacific Northwest under conifers, and in the Southwest under aspen, (Stamets), usually gregarious but also single, "in forests and parks, at forest edges, on decomposing plant remains and buried wood, late summer to fall, (Breitenbach), single or in small groups "in rich soil, humus, wood debris, or grass, in woodland", (Phillips), woods, wood edges, parkland, (Courtecuisse), usually fall, also spring and summer, (Buczacki)
Similar Species
Stropharia pseudocyanea differs in having smaller stature, smaller spores and wetter habitats, (Redhead(9)). Stropharia caerulea has "an only fragmentary annulus even when young, that is, one which is reduced almost to a mere annular zone, a purple-brown spore print without any violet tones, and lamellar edges which are not white-floccose but concolorous with the faces, and microscopically by lacking clavate cheilocystidia but having abundant rostrate chrysocystidia on the lamellar edges instead. In addition the hyphal ends in the [pileipellis] are clavate [rather than cylindric]", (Breitenbach). S. caerulea differs "in its rapidly discoloring cap, the paler gills, and the lack of veil-formed scales on the cap surface, and its generally smaller stature", (Stamets, whose descriptions of the veil remnants and fruitbody dimensions in the two species are not easy to distinguish). Stropharia caerulea and S. aeruginosa may "exhibit intermediate characteristics or a mix of characters, making it impossible to decide to which species they belong. Perhaps there is only one variable species, or possibly we have a third undescribed species here.", (Trudell(4) referring to the Pacific Northwest). Pholiota subcaerulea has a bluish cap (when fresh) and the color of the mature gills and the spore deposit is paler (cinnamon-brown), but it is included in Redhead''s concept of Stropharia pseudocyanea.
sometimes reported as poisonous, in Europe thought to be edible, (Arora), activity suspected but not known, one analysis showed no psilocybin or psilocin, edibility is questioned, (Stamets)
