Livid Pinkgill Identification Guide

The Setting You Will Be Standing In

The Livid Pinkgill is a big, heavy, pale mushroom of broadleaf woodland on heavy ground. Picture late summer or early autumn in an old oak, beech or hornbeam wood on clay or chalk, or the grassy fringe of such a wood where the canopy opens onto a ride or a parkland edge. Fruitbodies come up in troops, sometimes in wide arcs or partial rings, and they are substantial: a mature cap can be the width of a spread hand, with a stipe as thick as a thumb, and the whole thing has a solid, dense feel when you lift it.

At a distance it reads as a large, pale, tricholomatoid mushroom, and that is precisely the problem. Everything about the silhouette, the ivory-grey cap and the stout white stem says Tricholoma or Clitocybe. The identification turns on what happens to the gills, and on the colour of the spore deposit.

Step One: The Cap

The cap is 6-20 cm across, occasionally larger. Young caps are convex with a strongly and persistently inrolled margin that stays rolled under long after the cap has expanded. With age the cap flattens, often unevenly, usually with a low, broad, irregular umbo, and the margin becomes wavy, lobed and sometimes uplifted in old, weathered material.

The surface is dry to slightly greasy in wet weather, and it has a distinctive silky shine produced by fine innate radial fibrils. Look along the cap towards the light and you will see faint streaking and watermarking rather than a uniform matt finish. Colour is pale and rather cold: ivory, greyish-white, pale buff, dull grey-tan, sometimes with faintly darker streaks and yellowish-tan patches in age. There are no scales, no veil remnants and no zoning.

Step Two: The Gills, Watched Over Time

The gills are the crux, and they must be read on more than one specimen because they change.

Attachment is sinuate, that is, emarginate or notched just before the stipe, often with a tiny decurrent tooth running a millimetre or two down the stem. They are fairly crowded, broad and ventricose, with an even edge and several tiers of shorter lamellulae.

Colour runs through a sequence. In young buttons they are whitish to pale cream or faintly yellowish, which is exactly why a novice reading a single young fruitbody goes wrong. As spores mature the gills flush salmon-pink, then dull pinkish-brown, and in fully mature caps they are unmistakably pink. Always dig out the largest, oldest fruitbody in the troop and check its gills. If the whole troop is young, take a print.

Step Three: The Stipe and Base

The stipe is stout: 5-12 cm tall and 1-3 cm thick, sometimes more, solid and fibrous throughout, frequently slightly clubbed or thickened towards the base but never bulbous with a rim, and never sheathed by a sac. It is white to pale grey, longitudinally fibrillose-striate, often twisted, and finely frosted at the apex. There is no ring and no volva. Dig the base out complete and rub the soil away to confirm the absence of both.

Step Four: Flesh, Fracture and Odour

The flesh is thick, white and firm, and it does not change appreciably on cutting; at most it goes slightly cream. Snap the stipe: it tears into fibres rather than crumbling, which rules out the brittle-fleshed Russulaceae immediately.

Crush a fragment and smell it. The odour is strongly farinaceous, and in older fruitbodies it becomes rancid and unpleasant. A large pale woodland mushroom with a heavy farinaceous smell should already have you thinking about pinkgills.

Taking and Reading a Spore Print

This is the step that settles the genus, and with a cap this size it is easy. Cut a mature cap free, set it gill-side down on white paper or a glass slide, cover it with a bowl and leave it for two to four hours. A large cap gives a heavy, unmistakable deposit.

The print is salmon-pink to pinkish-brown, quite unlike the pure white of Tricholoma and Clitocybe, the pale buff-lilac of Lepista, or the dark chocolate of Agaricus. Judge it in daylight against the white paper and beside a known white print if you are unsure.

Under any modest microscope the confirmation is beautiful and unambiguous: the spores are angular, roughly 8-11 by 7-9.5 microns, and appear as irregular polygons with five to seven blunt corners whichever way they are rolled. Angular spores plus a pink print is the definition of Entoloma in the broad sense.

Substrate, Season and Ecology

Entoloma sinuatum is ectomycorrhizal, forming root partnerships with broadleaf trees, principally oak, beech, hornbeam and lime. It shows a marked preference for heavy, base-rich ground: clay soils, marl and calcareous loams. Consequently it is a fungus of lowland deciduous woodland, old hedgerow oaks, wood pasture and the grassy edges of such woods, rather than of acid heath or conifer plantation.

The season is late summer into autumn, roughly August to October in temperate regions, and it fruits gregariously, occasionally forming rings in grass under a spreading tree. Because the partnership is perennial, a productive spot is worth revisiting annually, and troops tend to reappear within the same few metres.

Separating the Closest Look-alikes

Calocybe gambosa is the classic comparison. It is also large, pale, farinaceous and gregarious in rings, but it fruits in spring rather than autumn, its crowded sinuate gills stay white or cream and never flush pink, and its spore print is white. When both stature and smell match, the print is the decider.

Clitopilus prunulus also drops a pink print, but it is a much smaller, softer mushroom with a white, matt, kid-leather cap surface, strongly decurrent gills and an often off-centre stipe. Under the microscope its spores are ellipsoid with longitudinal ridges rather than blunt polygons.

Clitocybe nebularis has a grey, cloudy, often frosted cap, adnate to slightly decurrent gills, a cream-white spore print and a sweetish-rancid odour rather than a clean farinaceous one.

Tricholoma species such as Tricholoma album and Tricholoma columbetta share the sinuate gill attachment and the stature but always drop a white print and never have gills that turn pink.

Lepista nuda and Lepista saeva have sinuate gills and a pale pinkish-buff print, but the print is much paler and duller, lilac tones appear in the gills or stipe, and their spores are ellipsoid and finely warted, never angular.

Agaricus species are easy once you look: free gills that leave a collar around the stem apex, a membranous ring and a dark chocolate-brown print.

Other large pinkgills such as Entoloma prunuloides and Entoloma lividoalbum are separated within the genus on stature, cap texture, spore dimensions, gill attachment and habitat, so once the pink print and angular spores put you in Entoloma, use overall size, the strongly inrolled margin and clay woodland habitat to narrow down.

Field Checklist

Large pale ivory to grey-tan cap, silky-streaky, with a long-inrolled and eventually wavy margin; sinuate gills that pass from cream to salmon-pink; stout solid white fibrous stipe with no ring and no volva; thick white unchanging flesh; strong farinaceous odour; salmon-pink spore print; angular polygonal spores; on clay or calcareous soil in broadleaf woodland and its grassy edges, late summer to autumn.