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Inky Cap or Alcohol Cap

Coprinopsis atramentaria

Description:

slender, smooth bullet-shaped cap with lavender grey gills when young and inky black gills when old.

Habitat:

can be found in a wide variety of disturbed habitats, but these were on my lawn.

Notes:

So cool how this ink cap has lavender grey gills when it is young that darken to black as it ages. I have included a vertical cross section of the young mushroom and also a photo of the dying mushroom with split stipes and inky black gills. Interesting! when we tried to do a spore print, the gills liquified and dyed the paper inky black, also the cutting board that it was sitting on!

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1 Comment

birdlady6000
birdlady6000 12 years ago

So the reason this is called Alcohol Ink is because you cannot eat it within 48 hours of drinking alcohol as it contains coprine which interferes with the metabolism of alcohol. Otherwise, it is a good edible. But I haven't tried it yet!!

KathleenMcEachern
Spotted by
KathleenMcEachern

Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada

Spotted on Oct 31, 2011
Submitted on Nov 5, 2011

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