Cortinarius sodagnitus
Color
Shape
Surface
Important Mushroom Background Information
Cortinarius sodagnitus is an unedible convex mushroom. It is gray-purple in youth and rusty brown in maturity. Flesh white or slightly lilac towards the periphery of the foot, bitter taste in the cuticle, and fungal odor. It grows from August to October, in deciduous forests, especially under beeches, less often in oaks or lindens. Prefers calcareous soils.
Other names: Bitter Bigfoot Webcap.
Cortinarius sodagnitus Mushroom Identification
Cap
The cap is 30-80 mm wide, at first hemispherical or glassy with a curved edge, finally flat. The skin of the hat is slimy when wet, blue-violet in early youth, soon creamy, yellow-yellow, or gray-yellow. The cobweb is whitish, mauve.
Stem
4-8 x 0.8-1.5 cm., almost cylindrical, but ending in a very wide marginated bulb that can reach up to 3.5 cm. dia., lilac, although in old age the bulb and the lower part of the foot turn ochraceous.
Flesh
The flesh is whitish, pale purple under the skin. The smell is indistinct. The taste is mild, sometimes bitter in the skin of the hat.
Macrochemical reactions
KOH - on the skin of the hat quickly pink to red, fleshlight pink.
Spores
The spores are almond-shaped, 910.5 x 56.5 m, medium to coarsely warty.
Cortinarius sodagnitus Mushroom Look-Alikes
Produces larger fruiting bodies and the skin of the hat reacts only slightly pink with KOH.
Has a fibrous, more grayish or ocher hat. It grows very rarely in warm oak forests.
Show a negative reaction of the skin of the hat with KOH.
Remains purple for a long time on the hat and the friction, reacts red with KOH in all parts of the fruiting body, and has coarsely warty spores of 1012 x 6.5 m.
Cortinarius sodagnitus Synonyms
Cortinarius caerulescens
Cortinarius violaceipes
Cortinarius pseudosodagnites
Cortinarius pulcherrimus
Sources
Photo Credit 1
Balint Dima/Norsk institutt for naturforskning