Funeral bell

Description

The funeral bell is a small, unremarkable "little brown mushroom" with a cap 1–6 cm across, which in dry weather is pale beige or yellow-ochre, and after rain ochre-brown or red-brown, with striations showing through. It has rusty-brown gills, a thin hollow stem with a fragile ring (often disappearing) and a darker base.

It grows in groups on dead wood, mainly beech in the lowlands and spruce in the mountains, from August to the first frosts. It is common.

It is easily confused with species growing on wood, especially the sheathed woodtuft, the velvet shank and the honey fungus. It contains amatoxins, the same poison as the death cap. Do not pick small, brown mushrooms growing in clumps on wood unless you are absolutely sure of the species; the poison cannot be removed in the kitchen.

Identification features

Cap

Diameter 1–6 cm. At first hemispherical or convex with an inrolled margin, then convex and flat, usually with a blunt broad umbo. Strongly hygrophanous: pale beige to yellow-ochre when dry, ochre-brown or red-brown when moist; dries from the top. In wet weather radial striation is visible. Surface smooth, moist or slightly sticky.

Hymenophore (underside of the cap)

Gills slightly bulging, narrow and crowded, broadly adnate to the stem or slightly decurrent (also described as notched with a tooth); at first ochre-brown, then rusty-brown (cinnamon), edges paler.

Stem

Height 2–8 cm, thickness 0.1–0.9 cm, cylindrical, hollow inside (solid when young). Ring membranous in the upper part of the stem, fragile — often disappears in older specimens, leaving a ring zone. Above the ring ochre and mealy-dusted, below brownish, with longitudinal silvery-white fibres, darker at the base (from olive-brown to black). No scales below the ring.

Flesh

Pale ochre in the cap, umber-brown in the stem. Taste and smell mealy, with a hint of radish. It must never be tasted; do not taste the flesh of any suspicious mushroom.

Spore print and spores

Spore print rusty-brown. Spores elliptic to ovoid, surface rough or wrinkled, warty, with a plage; 7–11 × 4–6 µm (descriptions give different ranges).

Habitat and distribution

Ecology. Saprotroph on the wood of dead trees, also on buried wood (which makes it seem to grow on the ground) and on leaf litter. Older atlases gave only coniferous wood, which is untrue: in the mountains often under spruces, in the lowlands mainly on beech wood. Grows in groups. It has many enzymes that break down lignocellulose.

Distribution. Widespread in the Northern Hemisphere (Europe, Asia, North America), also in Australia and Antarctica. Common in Central Europe, including Poland. Not legally protected.

Fruiting. From August to the first frosts (descriptions also give: from summer to autumn).

What can it be confused with?

• Kuehneromyces mutabilis (sheathed woodtuft) — Cinnamon gills, blackish-brown scales on the stem below the ring, a larger cap (up to 6 cm), spicy smell, dense clumps; safe identification requires an expert, because the mistake is easy, and the spores of the woodtuft are smooth.
• Flammulina velutipes (velvet shank) — Dark, velvety stem without a ring; gills white to pale yellow, spore print white.
• Armillaria mellea (honey fungus) — Sometimes confused; detailed differences — no data.
• Hypholoma capnoides, Psilocybe spp., Conocybe filaris — A superficial similarity is pointed out (also to hallucinogenic mushrooms and another poisonous species with amatoxins); details — no data.

Never rely on a single feature. If you are not sure — do not pick it; show the mushroom to a qualified mushroom expert.

Interesting facts

• Until 2001 G. autumnalis, G. oregonensis, G. unicolor and G. venenata were regarded as separate species; DNA studies showed that they are a single taxon.
• In the genus Galerina this is a species in which amatoxins have been found even in mycelium grown in liquid medium.
• Between 1978 and 1995 ten poisonings with amatoxin-containing Galerina were described in the literature, including two deaths in Washington state after eating G. venenata; according to some descriptions no fatal poisonings have been recorded.
• The epithet marginata comes from the Latin word meaning "edge"; the English name "funeral bell" means exactly that.