About this fungus
Yellow Fieldcap is a fungus in the Bolbitiaceae family. Its habitat and field characteristics are summarised below.
A very fragile, short-lived field mushroom with a sticky egg-yellow young cap that rapidly expands, fades and becomes radially lined, sometimes within a day.
What to check
Look for a smooth viscid yellow cap when fresh, a deeply striate margin as it expands, pale yellow gills becoming cinnamon-brown, and a thin hollow stem with no ring or volva. The spore print is cinnamon to rusty brown.
Variation
The cap changes quickly from bright yellow and egg-shaped to bell-shaped or flat, fading to buff, greyish or almost white from the margin inward. Old specimens often collapse and look very different from fresh ones.
Lookalikes
Other small yellow grassland mushrooms are usually firmer or retain their colour longer. Conocybe species can share the brown spores and rich substrates, but Yellow Fieldcap is exceptionally fragile, viscid when young and strongly striate as it expands.
Habitat and range
A saprotroph on dung, manured grass, compost, decaying straw and other rich plant remains, sometimes woodchips. It often appears rapidly after rain in short-lived flushes.
Food safety
Inedible.
Photographs
Amanita77 / CC BY-SA 3.0
Eric Steinert / CC BY-SA 3.0