Notes: Found under live oak, madrone, california bay.
This one had been bothering me for years. I only found this one when it was old, and I couldn’t tell if it was Psathyrella or Coprinellus/Coprinopsis. Finally found a young one, and it doesn’t look like Psathyrella now. So, getting a little closer…
Adding microscopic details…
The first micro-shot is of the cap surface at 400x in KOH. Here the surface is cellular, of globose cells in a single layer. There are numerous pileocytidia, which are fusiod to fusiod-ventricose with blunt to acute apecies, regularly species on the surface.
The second micro-shot is of the gill edge at 400x in KOH. Here are cheilocystidia also fusoid-ventricose, thin walled, hyaline, numerous. No pleurocystidia were obs. 4-spored basidia were obs.
The third micro-shot is of spores on the stipe apex at 1000x in KOH. The spores are dark grey-brown ellipsoid, smooth with a clear germ pore, about 10-11 um long. Also caulocystidia similar to other cystidia were obs.
This all matches up pretty well with the description in Champions du Suisse tome 4 of Coprinus impatiens, and the photo of the guys in-situ is a good match also. I then found it matches pretty well with the Coprinus key from the PWN key counsil, so I’m not sure what my problem is, I should have id’ed this years ago. Then I see that it also has a mention in Arora… if I had just followed the keys, and believed what they were saying to me. I just had to wait years until I had a dried sample in hand, and microscopic details to just get the same result.
Checking in Index fungorum, it seems that this species has been moved into Coprinellus from Coprinus. So, anyway, there a fairly complete id, perhaps not that uncommon a species, and looks fairly easy to id by eye, in the future.
