Saffrondrop Bonnet Identification Guide

The Setting and the First Look

Saffrondrop Bonnet is a fungus of shaded beech woodland on lime-rich soils, and it is almost always found on the woodland floor rather than on standing timber. The search image is a scatter of small, pale greyish to olive-brown conical caps standing on very thin stalks among fallen beech leaves, twigs and mossy debris. At first glance it is one of dozens of small bonnets and easy to walk past. What sets it apart is visible before you even pick it up: many of the fruit bodies in a colony will be flecked or streaked with vivid orange, particularly on the lower stipe, on the gill edges and wherever a slug has grazed. Those orange marks are dried latex, and they are the species' signature.

Reading the Cap

The cap is small, 1-3 cm across, conical to bell-shaped when young and expanding to broadly campanulate, sometimes with a small pointed umbo. The surface is smooth, dry to slightly moist and finely translucent-striate when damp, so the lines of the gills show faintly through the flesh from above. Colour is pale grey-brown, olive-brown, buff-brown or beige, usually darkest at the centre and paler at the margin, and quite often carrying rusty-orange stains where it has been handled or damaged. The margin itself is even and thin, sometimes slightly scalloped in age, and it is not scalloped-toothed or fringed with hairs.

The Gills

The gills are widely enough spaced to count easily, narrow, ascending and adnate with a small decurrent tooth. Colour begins whitish to pale grey and stays pale, but the diagnostic detail is the spotting: fresh gill edges are frequently marked with orange dots and stripes, and older fruit bodies show conspicuous saffron to rust-orange blotches along the gills and on the cap flesh above them. Look with a hand lens at the gill edge - the orange there is not a bruise but exuded latex.

The Latex Test

This is the decisive step and it takes five seconds. Hold the fruit body by the cap and snap or cut the stipe near its middle. A bright saffron-orange to deep orange latex wells out immediately, staining fingers and paper. It is copious for such a small fungus, and it does not change colour once exuded, drying to a rusty orange crust. Do this on a fresh specimen; in dry weather the flow is weaker, so test two or three fruit bodies from a shaded, damp part of the colony before concluding anything. Any bonnet that bleeds dark blood-red, wine-red or milky white latex is a different species, and any that bleeds nothing at all is out of consideration for this one.

Stipe, Base and Flesh

The stipe is 4-10 cm long and only 1-3 mm thick, straight or slightly flexuous, hollow, smooth and often polished-looking. The apex is pale grey to whitish and the lower half grades to yellowish-brown, orange-brown or rust, often becoming almost entirely orange in age from dried latex. The extreme base is clothed in coarse, stiff, whitish to orange-tinged hairs which bind litter and fine woody debris into a small mat - always excavate rather than snap, because that hairy base is a supporting character. The flesh is thin and pale in the cap and orange-tinged in the lower stipe, and it does not change colour on exposure to air beyond the latex staining.

Taking a Spore Print

Small bonnets print reluctantly, so choose a fully expanded but not collapsed cap, cut the stipe short, and place the cap gills-down on paper with a drop of water on the stalk stub to keep it hydrated. Cover with a small container and leave overnight. The print is white. Given how small the cap is, a thin print is normal, so tilt the paper into the light to read it. A white print in combination with orange latex and beech litter is effectively conclusive. Under a microscope the spores are ellipsoid, smooth and amyloid.

Substrate, Season and Ecology

Saffrondrop Bonnet is a saprotroph, breaking down small woody debris. Its favoured substrate is fallen beech twigs, buried branch fragments, leaf petioles and rotting roots, often within the leaf layer rather than on obvious deadwood, which is why it can look as though it is growing straight out of the soil. It is characteristic of mature beech woodland on calcareous or at least base-rich soils and is much less frequent on strongly acid ground. It also occurs occasionally with hornbeam, ash and other broadleaves in the same woodland types. Fruiting runs from late summer into late autumn, peaking in damp, mild conditions. Fruit bodies grow in small scattered groups or loose troops, occasionally in twos and threes from the same twig, but rarely in tight clumps.

Separating the Look-alikes on Morphology

Mycena haematopus also bleeds, but its latex is dark blood-red to purplish-red, its cap is distinctly reddish-brown to vinaceous with a finely scalloped, minutely toothed margin, and it grows in dense clusters directly on hardwood stumps and logs rather than scattered in litter.

Mycena sanguinolenta is much smaller and more slender, grows in litter and moss, and its dark red latex is accompanied by a fine dark red line along the gill edges.

Mycena galopus grows in similar litter and also bleeds, but its latex is white or watery-white, and the cap is grey to grey-brown with no orange staining anywhere.

Mycena epipterygia has a slimy, detachable cap cuticle and a viscid yellowish stipe, and produces no latex.

Mycena renati has a bright yellow, non-bleeding stipe and grows on hardwood.

Mycena polygramma has a stout, longitudinally grooved silvery stipe and produces no latex.

Small Gymnopus and Marasmius species in the same litter have tougher, wiry stalks and never bleed.

A Compact Field Sequence

Beech woodland on base-rich soil? Small conical grey-brown cap on a very thin stalk? Any orange staining visible on the stipe or gills? Snap the stipe - does bright saffron-orange latex flow at once and stay orange? Hairy, litter-binding base? White spore print? That sequence identifies Mycena crocata.