Hygrophoraceae
Summary 3
The Hygrophoraceae are a family of fungi in the order Agaricales. Originally conceived as containing white-spored, thick-gilled agarics (gilled mushrooms), including Hygrophorus and Hygrocybe species (the waxcaps or waxy caps), DNA evidence has extended the limits of the family, so it now contains not only agarics, but also basidiolichens and corticioid fungi. Species are thus diverse and are variously ectomycorrhizal, lichenized, associated with mosses, or saprotrophic. The family contains 25 genera and over 600 species. None is of any great economic importance, though fruit bodies of some Hygrocybe and Hygrophorus species are considered edible and may be collected for sale in local markets.
Identification 4
"Identification of waxy caps ranges from easy to extremely difficult. Some, like the blackening and brilliantly scarlet Hygrocybe conica, are immediately recognizable and distinct. On the other end of the spectrum, there are dozens of white, gray, and brown species separated on the basis of erudite microscopic features. In fact, I had no idea just how many of these boring waxy caps there were before I set about making the key below. There are seemingly innumerable hordes of these snore-inducing masses, and constructing the key took months longer than it should have, since I wrote the brightly-colored-species portion of the key first and then could only stomach working on the others in small groups."
Sources and Credits
- (c) W.Coyote, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by W.Coyote
- (c) Ken-ichi Ueda, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), https://www.flickr.com/photos/ken-ichi/5524770538/
- (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygrophoraceae
- (c) W.Coyote, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA)
