Goblet Waxcap Identification Guide

Where and how you find it

Goblet Waxcap belongs to wet, acid, mossy ground. Think of a Sphagnum flush at the edge of a bog, a damp mossy lawn that has never been fertilised, a boggy corner of a heath, the seepage line on a hillside, or the wet mossy skirt around a rotting log in old woodland. It is one of the few waxcaps that regularly appears in genuinely soggy places, and it can even fruit from moss growing on decayed wood.

The first impression is of something small and vividly orange standing higher than it ought to. The cap is only one to three centimetres across, but the stem is slender and disproportionately long, so the fungus is held up above the moss on a thin stalk like a lit match. Look along the light rather than down through it and a scattered troop is easy to pick out against green Sphagnum.

The common name comes from the cap shape at maturity: the disc becomes depressed and the margin lifts, so the whole thing turns into a shallow goblet or funnel on a stick.

Reading the cap

Start convex, end funnelled. A young cap is a simple orange dome; as it expands the centre sinks and the margin rises and becomes wavy, sometimes finely scalloped or split with age.

Colour runs from bright scarlet-orange or flame-orange through to orange-red, and it fades markedly with age and sun to apricot, orange-yellow or even pale buff at the very edge. Do not name a waxcap on colour alone; use surface texture instead. The cap of this species is dry to slightly moist rather than sticky, and under a hand lens the surface is minutely scurfy, granular or finely scaly, especially over the disc. That fine roughening is important - several of its relatives are polished and smooth.

Hold the cap up to the light. The margin is often faintly translucent-striate when damp, showing the lines of the gills beneath.

The gills - the key feature

Turn it over and look at how the gills meet the stem. In Goblet Waxcap they run a long way down it, strongly and obviously decurrent, so the underside looks like a shallow funnel of blades rather than a flat plate. This is the single most useful field character and it separates the species from most of the small red and orange waxcaps around it.

The gills themselves are thick, waxy to the touch, widely spaced, and noticeably paler than the cap - pale yellow, egg-yellow or orange-yellow, sometimes with a slightly orange edge. Between them you will often see low cross-veins connecting adjacent gills near the stem. Rub one between finger and thumb: it feels soft and greasy, almost like candle wax, and it smears rather than shredding. That waxy texture is the family signature.

Stipe, base and flesh

The stem is 3-8 cm long but only 2-4 mm thick, cylindrical, often curved or wavy where it has pushed through moss, and usually the same orange to orange-red as the cap or a shade paler, sometimes yellowing towards the base. It is dry and smooth, not slimy, and there is no ring or veil of any kind. Inside it is stuffed and soon becomes hollow.

Extract the base carefully by parting the moss rather than pulling - the stem is brittle and snaps easily. The base is simply tapered, with white mycelial threads binding moss and peat, and there is no bulb, no sac and no volva.

The flesh is thin, orange to yellowish, and unchanging. Cut a stem lengthwise and watch for thirty seconds: no blackening, no reddening, no blueing. Absence of blackening is worth recording, because several waxcaps do darken on handling. There is no distinctive smell.

Spore print

Waxcaps drop white spores, and confirming that is a necessary step. The caps are small, so use two or three of them, place them gills-down on black or dark paper for the strongest contrast, cover with a cup and leave for six to twelve hours. On white paper a thin white deposit is nearly invisible, which leads people to think the print failed.

Expect a clean white to very pale cream deposit. Under a microscope the spores are smooth, colourless and elliptical, roughly 7-12 x 4-6 micrometres, and the gill flesh is made of long parallel hyphae. A white print combined with thick waxy widely spaced gills and a small brightly coloured fruitbody places you firmly in the waxcap group.

Habitat, season and ecology

This species prefers wetter and more acid sites than most of its relatives: Sphagnum bogs and flushes, wet heath, damp unimproved pasture, mossy lawns and mossy rotting wood in humid woodland. It is a species of nutrient-poor ground with a well-developed moss layer, and it disappears where land is fertilised, drained or ploughed.

Waxcaps as a group are indicators of long-undisturbed, low-nutrient grassland and moss communities; they are slow to colonise and slow to return once lost. Fruiting runs from late summer into late autumn, peaking after prolonged wet weather, and a good site will produce it in the same square metre year after year.

Separating it from its closest relatives

• Hygrocybe miniata is the main confusion. It shares the small size, scarlet-orange colour and finely scurfy cap, but its gills are adnate to at most slightly decurrent, its stem is shorter and proportionately stouter, and it favours drier short turf rather than wet moss. Gill attachment plus habitat separates the two.
• Hygrocybe coccinea is larger, with a smooth, moist, deep blood-red cap and broadly adnate gills with a short decurrent tooth at most.
• Hygrocybe helobia is small and reddish with adnate to slightly decurrent gills and a distinct garlic-like odour.
• Hygrocybe calciphila looks very like miniata but occupies calcareous ground, again with non-decurrent gills.
• Rickenella fibula is a tiny orange moss-dweller with decurrent gills, but its gills are whitish to pale cream rather than yellow, the cap is only a few millimetres across with a navel-like centre, and the whole fruitbody lacks the thick waxy gill texture.
• Chanterelles are sometimes suggested by the funnel shape and the name, but they have blunt forking ridges rather than true blades and are thick-fleshed and firm.

Field checklist

Small scarlet-orange cap becoming depressed and goblet-shaped; cap surface dry and minutely scurfy; gills thick, waxy, widely spaced, pale yellow and strongly decurrent; slender curved orange stem with no ring; flesh thin and unchanging; white spore print; wet acid mossy ground in autumn. Get the gill attachment right and this species is one of the more tractable small waxcaps.