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This attractive and distinctive mushroom can occasionally be found growing on dead wood in Europe and North Africa. The underside of the cap is typical of the genus Pluteus - the gills are pale, soon becoming pink when the spores ripen. But the upper surface is a bright tawny or olivaceous yellow. The species name leoninus (meaning leonine) refers to this cap colour.
[edit] Description
- The golden to olive-yellow convex cap is 3-7cm in diameter, is hygrophanous, and usually has a grooved edge. The darker central disc has a slight velvety tomentum.
- The gills are yellowish at first, then salmon pink (the colour of the spore powder).
- The stipe is up to about 7cm, often striate, being white to cream, and often darker near the base.
- The mushroom grows on stumps and wood debris of broad-leaved trees and sometimes of conifers.
- At the microscopic level, the filamentous cap cuticle is a trichoderm. The gills have scanty bladder-shaped pleurocystidia, and abundant fusiform cheilocystidia. The spores are smooth, almost globular, approx. 7×6μ.
[edit] References
- Meinhard Moser: Basidiomycetes II: Röhrlinge und Blätterpilze, Gustav Fischer Verlag Stuttgart (1978). English edition: translated by Simon Plant: Keys to Agarics and Boleti (Roger Phillips 1983)
- Régis Courtecuisse, Bernard Duhem : Guide des champignons de France et d'Europe (Delachaux & Niestlé, 1994-2000). ISBN 2-603-00953-2
- Régis Courtecuisse : "Mushrooms of Britain & Europe" (Harper Collins 1999). ISBN 0 00 220012 0
- Roger Phillips : "Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britain & Europe" (Pan Books Ltd., London 1981).
