Identification: Hebeloma crustuliniforme ? (spore pictures included)

Discussion in 'Fungi, Lichens and Slime Molds' started by Narcio, Oct 7, 2010.

  1. Narcio

    Narcio Member

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    I found these mushrooms growing under a spruce tree in my yard today (Oct 7th 2010) in southern Ontario.

    I tried to identify these using mushroomexpert.com and my mushroom book and came up with Hebeloma crustuliniforme "poison pie" as the most likely so far. I am far from an expert though.

    It has a fairly strong brown spore print that developed quite quickly. I saw some of the brown spore marks after only a few minutes on a sheet of white paper under a clear glass. You can see the print, as developed after 5 hours or so, in one of the pictures below.

    To me the smell is not particularly distinct but my nose may not be the best.

    I did some amateur microscopy and have included a couple pictures of the spores as seen through my microscope at 400x (with blue stain). I don't have any fancy equipment for taking pictures through the microscope; I just used my Nikon D90 so they are kind of blurry.

    Any help with the ID of this one?

    Edit:

    I found some new samples of these mushrooms just coming out of the ground today and they do have a white partial veil when they are young (see pictures.) There were probably a hundred or so of these tiny brown caps coming up just over night, most smaller than a penny in diameter. IMG_7333.jpg has newspaper print in the background of the picture to give you an idea of the dimensions of those small ones.

    I also took a look at the gills under the microscope and found these small long structures ( cheilocystidia ? ) at the tip / edge of the gill. The last three pictures show these. The last one is at 400x, while the two second last ones are at 100x.
     

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    Last edited: Oct 8, 2010
  2. MycoRob

    MycoRob Active Member

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    Does it have an odor?
     
  3. Narcio

    Narcio Member

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    It does have an odour, but I could not pin-point a particular description other than being a bit stronger smelling than some mushrooms. I have read that those Hebeloma crustuliniforme smell radish like and I am not really sure what radish like means in regards to mushroom smells.

    Maybe I'll try to get a second opinion on the odour and post back here.
     
  4. MycoRob

    MycoRob Active Member

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    I find the rashishy odor subtle but always present. Hold the gills under your nose and breath slow enough that whole breath lasts about 7 seconds. The 'radish odor' i experience is more like a mild agitation in my nose that i can then extrapolate and imagine as a radish.
     
  5. Narcio

    Narcio Member

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    Despite your suggestion for how to smell the mushroom, the smell test is inconclusive to me. I don't want to say a definite yes or no to a radish smell because it does have a bit of a "strong" smell to it, but it is a mushroomy type of smell too. I'm not really good with smell descriptions, I suspect its one of those things learned from lots of experience.

    Are the caps of these mushrooms always slimy, as some sources describe? None of these that I've found have had slime on the caps.

    I also could not find any veil, although none of the mushrooms I found were very young looking, so they may have disappeared already if they were present.

    I do see some flaky / granular type of white spots on the stem of the mushrooms right near the top at the cap.

    Can you suggest any microscopic details that I could look for to help identify this mushroom? I'm going to try to make a gill cross-section slide and see if I can find these cheilocystidia that these mushrooms apparently have.

    Thanks for your help so far!
     
  6. Narcio

    Narcio Member

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    I updated with some new pictures (see first post.)
     
  7. vitog

    vitog Contributor 10 Years

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    They look like Cortinarius to me, with the cobweb-like veil and rusty-brown spores.
     

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