Aniseed Funnel

The Aniseed Funnel is one of the few temperate agarics that can be named with confidence by smell alone. Its scent of aniseed or liquorice is strong enough to carry on the air, and combined with the unusual verdigris to blue-green cap it makes the species easy to recognise even for beginners.

Structurally it is a typical Clitocybe: a shallowly funnelled cap, decurrent gills and a pale spore deposit. The genus name means sloping head, a reference to the tilted funnel shape most members develop as they mature. What sets C. odora apart within the genus is pigment, since almost all its relatives are white, grey, buff or tawny.

The blue-green colour is variable. Fresh, moist specimens in shaded litter can be a saturated sea-green or turquoise, while older or drier ones fade to pale grey-green, straw or nearly white, at which point the aniseed smell becomes the decisive character.

Cap

The cap is 3-8 cm across, convex when young with an incurved margin, expanding to flat and then shallowly depressed with a wavy, often irregularly lobed margin. The surface is dry to slightly silky, sometimes finely felted, and coloured blue-green, verdigris or greenish-grey, fading with age and sun exposure to pale greyish-buff or dirty cream, usually retaining a green tint near the margin.

Gills

The gills are moderately crowded, fairly narrow and adnate to distinctly decurrent. They are whitish to pale greenish or cream, generally paler than the cap, and darken slightly to buff with age. They separate fairly readily from the cap flesh.

Stipe

The stipe is 3-7 cm long and 5-12 mm thick, cylindrical or slightly swollen at the base, coloured pale greenish, greyish-buff or whitish with a greenish flush. It is fibrous, becoming hollow with age, and the base is usually matted with white mycelium and adhering leaf fragments. No ring or volva is present.

Flesh and spore print

The flesh is thin, whitish to faintly greenish, and does not change colour when cut. The aniseed smell pervades the whole fruit body and persists in dried material for years. The spore print is pale cream, sometimes with a very faint pinkish cast.

The Aniseed Funnel grows on the ground in leaf litter in broadleaf woodland, with a strong preference for beech, oak and hornbeam, though it also occurs in mixed woods and occasionally under conifers. It favours moist, humus-rich, shaded ground and is often found along woodland rides and banks where litter accumulates.

Fruiting runs from late summer through autumn. Fruit bodies appear singly, in small scattered groups, or in loose arcs, and are widespread and locally common across Europe, temperate Asia and North America.

Clitocybe odora is a litter saprotroph. Its mycelium colonises fallen leaves and fine woody debris, breaking down cellulose and lignin and contributing to the annual turnover of the forest floor. It does not form root sheaths on trees, so its distribution follows litter depth and moisture rather than the presence of any particular mycorrhizal host.

The aniseed odour is produced by volatile anethole-type compounds released from the flesh. These volatiles are thought to play a role in deterring or attracting invertebrates around the fruit body, and they remain detectable in herbarium specimens long after collection, making the species one of the easiest agarics to confirm from dried material.

Clitocybe fragrans and Clitocybe deceptiva share the aniseed smell but are much smaller, thinner-fleshed and pale buff to whitish without any green tint, with a translucent striate margin when moist. Green-tinged Stropharia aeruginosa, the Verdigris Agaric, is a very different fungus with a slimy blue-green cap, a distinct ring on the stipe and a dark purple-brown spore print.

Faded, colourless specimens can be confused with Clitocybe phyllophila or other white funnels, which lack any anise scent and are chalkier white with a frosted cap surface. Pale green Russula species have brittle, chalk-like flesh that snaps cleanly, free-standing rather than decurrent gills, and no stipe fibres, so a simple bend test separates them at once.