Clitocybe nebularis

So what are the important features then? The size, habit (often in large fairy rings), habitat and rather pale greyish brown colours throughout, often with a whitish bloom on the cap, will give you a good start. The gills should be crowded and have a tendency to run down the stipe slightly (some books describe them as decurrent and others as adnate / decurrent). The spore print will be a dark cream colour. The cap does not change colour as it dries out (not hygrophanous) and the smell is rather aromatic (a description that covers a multitude of sins!). More information about some of these terms and fungal lifestyles.

Fruiting

the main fruiting period for this species in Scotland is in September and October but records occur in November, December and January so it is worth keeping an eye out for even late in the season.

Habitat

This is a common species found in soil and litter in gardens and in both dedicuous and coniferous woodlands. It is a saprotroph and will tolerate rather enriched soil such as is found close to compost heaps: it grows alongside Lepista nuda (Wood Blewitt) around the compost in my garden. It can form large fairy rings amongst the fallen leaves but for such a sizeable toadstool, it can often be difficult to spot.

Distribution

The Checklist gives the distribution as ‘common’ throughout and indeed the distribution map below is much better populated than most previous fungi of the month. There are over 5000 records on the FRDBI for this species but interestingly only 202 from Scotland (NBN Atlas map). Indeed there are still a lot of gaps on the map in Scotland for a 'common' species - it would be good to fill them in and find out whether this species is genuinely less common in the north.

There's a fairy ring in here somewhere!