Star Pinkgill | Entoloma conferendum Identification Guide

First impression: another small brown mushroom in the grass

The scene is ordinary and that is the problem. A mown churchyard, an unimproved pasture, a mossy verge, a dune slack, a woodland ride: somewhere in the short turf are scattered slim brown mushrooms 3 to 8 cm tall with pointed caps, standing singly or a few together rather than in tight clumps. Nothing about the first impression is distinctive, and dozens of unrelated species share it. What turns this into a tractable identification is a disciplined sequence: confirm the shape, confirm the gill colour change, take a print, and then look at the spores, because in this species the spores are genuinely unusual.

Step 1: the cap

Measure and describe carefully. The cap is 1 to 4 cm across, conical to bell-shaped when young, expanding to convex or nearly flat, and it almost always keeps a small, sharply pointed central umbo. The critical property is that it is hygrophanous, meaning the colour depends on how wet it is. Moist caps are dark sepia to grey-brown and translucently striate almost to the umbo, so you can see the lines of the gills through the flesh. As the cap dries it pales from the centre outward to greyish beige or dull ochre with a silky sheen and fine radial fibrils. Both states are the same mushroom, and a mixed collection dried at different rates can look like two species. The margin is often slightly wavy or upturned in age.

Step 2: the gills, watched over time

The gills are adnexed to almost free, moderately spaced, and noticeably ventricose (bellied) in profile. Their colour is the sequence you are looking for: whitish to pale grey at first, then a clean salmon-pink as spores mature, then a duller pinkish-brown. Gill edges stay even and the same colour as the faces. Note also that the gills are not decurrent, which matters when separating this from the other common pink-spored genus in grassland.

Step 3: the stipe

The stipe is 3 to 8 cm long and only 2 to 4 mm thick, cylindrical, often slightly compressed or twisted. Its surface is the most useful feature: it is longitudinally fibrous-striate, overlaid with silvery silky fibrils over a grey-brown to brownish ground, so it catches the light in fine vertical lines. The base carries white mycelial down or a few white fibrils binding soil and moss. The stipe is hollow, snaps with a slightly cartilaginous break, and there is no ring and no volva at any stage.

Step 4: flesh and colour change

Slice the fruit body lengthwise. The flesh is thin and watery grey-brown in the cap, paler and whitish in the stipe cortex. There is no colour change on cutting, no milk, no blueing, no reddening. The smell is weak, sometimes very faintly mealy or cucumber-like, often effectively absent. That weakness is itself useful, because the commonest confusion species has a strong mealy smell.

Step 5: the spore print, which is not optional

This identification cannot be finished in the field. Cut the cap free, lay it gills down on white paper, cover it with a cup or box to hold humidity, and leave it in a cool place for four to twelve hours. If you intend to use a microscope, put half the cap on a glass slide instead so you can mount the deposit directly.

Read the print colour against white. It should be pale to mid pink with a salmon or slightly brownish cast. Anything white, cream, rusty-ochre or dark chocolate takes you out of the genus immediately. A thin print can look ambiguous, so scrape the deposit into a small heap with a blade before judging the colour.

Step 6: the spores, and why this species is named for stars

Mount a scrape of the print in water and look at it. Most members of the genus have angular spores with flat facets, five to eight sides, and they look different depending on which way they lie. Entoloma conferendum does not: its spores are cruciform, roughly 9 to 12 by 8 to 11 micrometres, with four to six blunt knob-like corners so that they appear star-shaped or cross-shaped from essentially every orientation. Rolling a spore under the coverslip and finding that it stays star-like is as close to a diagnostic character as this group offers. Two-spored basidia are common, and clamp connections are present.

Habitat and season

At heart this is a grassland fungus. It is at home in unimproved pasture, mown lawns, churchyards, mossy verges, dune systems and old meadows, and it also turns up on woodland rides, path edges and among mosses in open birch or willow scrub. It grows from soil and litter as a decomposer rather than as a tree partner, which is why it is not tied to any particular tree species. It has a notably long season, appearing from late spring and continuing through to late autumn, and it is often one of the first waxcap-meadow fungi to show up in a wet summer.

Separating it from look-alikes by structure

Entoloma sericeum. The main confusion. It is darker and more chestnut-brown, less sharply umbonate, with a strongly silky-shiny cap when dry, gills that turn brown-pink quickly, and a strong mealy smell. Decisively, its spores are the usual angular five- to eight-sided type, not star-shaped.

Entoloma papillatum and E. juncinum. Both are slender grassland or scrub species with pointed or nipple-like umbos, but again both have ordinary angular spores and slightly different cap tones, paler ochre-brown in the first and more greyish in the second.

Mycena species. Similar size and silky stipe, but the spore print is white and the gills never turn pink.

Small Psathyrella species. Fragile caps, mottled greyish gills and a dark brown to blackish print.

Clitopilus prunulus. Also pink-spored, but the cap is white, matt and suede-like, the shape is funnel-like, and the gills run decurrent down the stipe.

Small Inocybe and Galerina species. Brown or rusty prints respectively, with fibrillose or greasy caps, and never a clean salmon-pink gill stage.

Field sequence

1. Small brown umbonate cap in grass or moss, striate when moist.
2. Gills pass from grey-white through salmon-pink to pinkish-brown, adnexed not decurrent.
3. Stipe slender, silvery fibrous-striate, hollow, white down at base.
4. No colour change on cutting; smell weak at most.
5. Print pale to mid pink.
6. Spores cross-shaped in every orientation.