Guardian Nature School Team Contact Blog Project Noah Facebook Project Noah Twitter

A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife

Join Project Noah!
nature school apple icon

Project Noah Nature School visit nature school

Amethyst Deceiver

laccaria amethystina

Description:

Laccaria amethystina, commonly known as the Amethyst Deceiver is a small brightly colored, edible mushroom, that grows in deciduous as well as coniferous forests. Because its bright amethyst coloration fades with age and weathering, it becomes difficult to identify, hence the common name ‘Deceiver’. This common name is shared with its close relation Laccaria laccata that also fades and weathers. It is found mainly in Northern temperate zones, though it is reported to occur in tropical Central and South America as well. Recently, some of the other species in the genus have been given the common name of "deceiver".

Habitat:

L. amethystina is a common species in most temperate zones of Europe, Asia, Central, South, and eastern North America. It grows solitary to scattered with a variety of deciduous and coniferous trees, with which it is mycorrhizally associated, though it most commonly occurs with trees in the Fagales. It appears in late summer to early winter, and often with beech; in Central and South America, it more commonly grows in association with oak. Research has shown that L. amethystina is a so-called "ammonia fungus", an ecological classification referring to those fungi that grow abundantly on soil after the addition of ammonia, or other nitrogen-containing material; the congeneric species Laccaria bicolor is also an ammonia fungus

Notes:

This species was first described in 1778 by well-known English botanist and apothecary William Hudson as Agaricus amethystinus, and later put into the genus Laccaria by Mordecai Cubitt Cooke. The amethyst deceiver has had many binomials over a great many years, but reference to the amethyst coloration is featured in most of these. It was once placed in the genus Collybia, as Collybia amethystina, which was probably due in part to its tough collybioid-like stem. Its present binomial places it in the genus Laccaria, with the specific epithet amethystina , a pairing first used by Cooke in 1884. In 1922 it was named as a variant of Laccaria laccata, Laccaria laccata var. amethystina (Cooke) Rea, which is now a synonym

Species ID Suggestions



Sign in to suggest organism ID

No Comments

AlexKonig
Spotted by
AlexKonig

Kerkrade, Limburg, Netherlands

Spotted on Oct 8, 2011
Submitted on Oct 9, 2011

Spotted for Mission

Related Spottings

Laccaria Laccaria Laccaria sp. Amethyst deceiver

Nearby Spottings

turkey tail red squirrel or Eurasian red squirrel Small Stagshorn Saffrondrop Bonnet
Noah Guardians
Noah Sponsors
join Project Noah Team

Join the Project Noah Team