Mycena Purpureofusca
Taxonomy
The species was first described as Agaricus purpureofuscus by American mycologist Charles Horton Peck in 1885. The type collection was made in Caroga, New York, from a moss-covered trunk of spruce. Pier Andrea Saccardo transferred it to Mycena in 1887, giving it the name by which it is currently known. William Alphonso Murrill moved it to Prunulus in 1916, but this genus has since been subsumed in Mycena. In 1879, Petter Karsten described a collection made in Scandinavia as Mycena atromarginata var. fuscopurpurea, but Rudolph Arnold Maas Geesteranus later placed this in synonymy with M. purpureofusca. Another synonym, according to Maas Geesteranus, is Mycena sulcata, described by Josef Velenovský in 1920 from Czechoslovakia.
Alexander H. Smith classified the species in section Calodontes, subsection Ciliatae of Mycena in his 1947 monograph on North American Mycena. Rolf Singer put it in the section Rubromarginata in his 1986 The Agaricales in Modern Taxonomy, a group characterized by having distinct red marginate gills. The specific epithet purpureofuscus combines the Latin words purpur (purple) and fusco (dark or dusky). It is commonly known as the "purple edge bonnet".
Description
The cap is conical to bell-shaped, flattening in age, and reaches a diameter of 0.5–2.5 cm (0.2–1.0 in). The cap margin is usually bent inwards initially. The cap surface is initially covered with tiny white hairs, but later becomes smooth. It is slightly hygrophanous, and when moist, is slightly translucent, so that the outline of the gills underneath are apparent. Its color is dark purple in the center, fading to pale lilac at the margins; older specimens are purplish-gray. The flesh is thin and pliant, with a texture similar to cartilage. It is initially purplish-gray, becoming pale lilac to white in age. The odor and taste of the flesh are not distinctive. The narrow gills have an ascending attachment to the stipe and are narrowly adnate. They are somewhat closely spaced, with pallid to grayish face color and dark grayish purple edges that are sometimes fringed. The tubular stipe measures 3–10 cm (1.2–3.9 in) long by 1–3 mm thick. It is tough and cartilaginous, and its base it covered with white hairs. Overall, its color is that of the cap or paler, and often paler near the top. The edibility of the mushroom is unknown.
Spores are broadly ellipsoid in shape, amyloid, and have dimensions of either 8–10 by 6–7 μm or 10–14 by 6.7–8.5 μm depending on whether they originated from four-or two-spored basidia (spore-bearing cells), respectively. There are abundant cheilocystidia on the gill edges. They measure 30–50 by 7–12 μm, and are fusoid-ventricose, with tips that are broadly rounded. They are filled with a purplish sap and have granular contents. The cap tissue comprises a well-differentiated cuticle, a distinct hypoderm, and a filamentous tramal body. Clamp connections in the hyphae are rare or absent.