About this fungus
Dung Roundhead is a fungus in the Strophariaceae family. Its habitat and field characteristics are summarised below.
A small straw-yellow mushroom with a rounded, sticky cap held on a disproportionately long slender stem, usually growing directly from herbivore dung.
What to check
Confirm a cap that stays hemispherical or broadly rounded, a sticky cap and lower stem when moist, broadly attached gills that darken from grey to mottled purple-brown, and a dark purple-brown spore print. The thin ring is fragile and may survive only as a spore-darkened band.
Variation
The cap ranges from pale straw-yellow through ochre to nearly white as it dries. The gills begin grey or clay-coloured and become mottled dark purple-brown while their edges often remain pale. Rain or age can remove most of the ring.
Lookalikes
Panaeolus semiovatus also fruits on dung and may have a ring, but it usually has a paler, less glutinous cap, strongly mottled grey-black gills and a black rather than purple-brown spore print. Other small dung fungi are common, so substrate alone is not an identification.
Habitat and range
Saprotrophic on dung from grazing herbivores and in heavily manured pasture, lawns and rough grassland. It is widespread across temperate and other regions where livestock and wild grazers occur.
Food safety
Unpalatable.
Photographs
Jason Hollinger / CC BY-SA 3.0
James Lindsey / CC BY-SA 3.0
James Lindsey / CC BY-SA 3.0