Welcome back to Mushroom Monday, a weekly look at some of PEI’s easy-to-identify fungi. Today it’s the beautiful Purple-gilled Laccaria (aka Purple-and-White Deceiver, Laccaria ochropurpurea).
Laccaria fungi can vary in appearance depending on age and environmental conditions, hence the ‘deceiver’ name. There are dozens of species in this group and – as a mushroom beginner – I can’t identify most of them (even experts sometimes need to look at the microscopic spores to confirm species). But a few, including this one, are beginner friendly.
That said, these did fool me for a minute. I was collecting edible Meadow Mushrooms (Agaricus spp., featured in last week’s post), spotted the Laccaria’s smooth, greyish-white caps in the distance, and thought they were more of the same. Up close, those widely spaced purple gills gave this mushroom’s true identity away!
Purple-gilled Laccaria can have lovely light-violet caps when young, but – true to the deceiver’s name – they tend to fade to greyish-white as they age. Regardless of cap colour, underneath will be striking purple gills connecting to a solid, fibrous stem with no skirt or ring. If you dig up the base of this mushroom, you may be lucky enough to find some purplish mycelium. These thread-like structures are the underground ‘body’ of the fungus; the above-ground mushroom we see is just the reproductive fruit, like an apple on a tree.
Purple-gilled Laccaria are edible, though I didn’t find enough to bother trying this time. I’ll be on the lookout for more over the fall and will update this post if I get to taste them. They’re said to be nothing special and normally only the caps are eaten as the stems are too tough. Even so, I’m interested in expanding my culinary tests beyond the 20 beginner-level species I’ve tried to date. If you are going to try them yourself, do be sure of the identification. There are toxic purple-gilled mushrooms, notably some Cortinarius species. Among other differences, Corts have brown spores while our Laccaria’s spores are white; if in doubt, check with an expert.
While I do like to taste-test edible fungi, I am far more interested in their ecological roles. Laccaria fungi form mutually beneficial relationships with both hardwood and softwood trees, sharing water and nutrients with the trees in exchange for sugars the trees produce via photosynthesis. This is by no means unique to this group, and many mushrooms do this. In some cases, the relationship helps trees (and other plants) grow faster or withstand harsh growing conditions; in others, it’s essential to their survival.
Purple-gilled Laccaria can be found in woodlands (especially where there is Beech, Oak, or White Pine) or in grassy areas where there are trees nearby, as was the case here. I’m fascinated by coloured fungi, and the even more strikingly-coloured Amethyst Deceiver (Laccaria amethystina) also grows here on PEI and is on my list to find.
With plants, colours serve some specific purpose: green chlorophyll makes food from sunlight, bright flowers attract pollinators, drab seeds hide from predators. But fungi don’t care about photosynthesis, pollination, or predation so why bother being colourful? One of the many mysteries of PEI untamed!
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