Image of Melanoleuca polioleuca (Fr.) Kühner & Maire 1934

Description:

Slo.: pegasta gostolistka - Melanoleuca polioleuca (Fr.) G. Moreno - Habitat: Mixed wood side and grassland of a golf playground; flat terrain, relatively humid but sunny place, exposed to direct rain, average precipitations ~ 3.000 mm/year, average temperature 8-10 deg C, elevation 370 m (1.200 feet), alpine phytogeographical region. - Substratum: soil. - Comments: There is a confusion about the names as well as spore dimension data in literature available to me. For example: Rodger mushrooms has Melanoleuca polioleuca as a synonym of Melanoleuca melaleuca. Index Fungorum as well as Slovenian checklist of fungi have both names as valid names. I keep with data in Ref.(1). - Growing solitary and in large, but sparse groups, many fruit bodies. Pileus diameter up to 9 cm (3,5 inch), up to 10 cm (4 inch) tall. Taste slightly unpleasant, smell indistinctive. Cap glabrous, dark gray-brown (oac868), gills whitish-beige (oac850-851), stipe concolorous with the cap, darker toward the base. SP whitish with a slight pink tint (oac857). Some mycelium present at the base of the stipe. - Spores ornamented. Dimensions: 8.1 (SD = 0.5) x 5.1 (SD = 0.3) micr., Q = 1.59 (SD = 0.08), n = 30. Many fusiform and lageniform pleurocystidia present as well as such with crystals at their tips (this excludes M. melaleuca). Motic B2-211A, magnification 1.000 x, oil, in water. Congo red. - Ref.: (1) G.J.Krieglsteiner (Hrsg.), Die Grosspilze Bade-Wrttembergs, Band 3, Ulmer (2001), p 375. (2) R.Phillips, Mushrooms, Macmillan (2006), p 99. (3) M.Noordeloos et all, Flora Agaricina Neerlandica #4, Balcema (1999), p164. (4) A.Poler, ed., Seznam gliv Slovenije (in Slovene), 2nd Ed., Assoc. of Mycol.Soc. of Slovenia (1998), p 48.