Gymnopus peronatus (Bolton) Gray

Widespread and common

In small troops on leaf and needle litter in mixed woodland

This species was originally described by James Bolton in his 1788 book "An history of fungusses, growing about Halifax" as Agaricus peronatus at a time when all gilled mushrooms were assigned to genus Agaricus. Then in 1821 another Englishman, Samuel Frederick Gray published his "Natural Arrangement of British Plants" (including fungi) in which he allocated the species to the already existing genus Gymnopus. In 1791 Bulliard described the same species as Agaricus urens, the epithet "urens" ("burning") referring to the acrid taste, and in 1836 Fries put it genus Marasmius. Also in 1871 Paul Kummer put this mushroom in genus Collybia, giving it the name Collybia peronata. For many years it was known either as Marasmius urens or Collybia peronata (or sometimes Marasmius peronatus or Collybia urens). The peronatus and urens forms have been distinguished as different species, urens having a lighter-coloured cap, but this view is outdated. In much later work culminating in 1997, Antonín and Noordeloos found that the genus Collybia as defined at that time was unsatisfactory due to being polyphyletic and they proposed a fundamental rearrangement. After being placed in a resurrected genus Gymnopus, this species is now accepted as being classified in the genus Collybiopsis. The species name peronata indicates that the stem is "booted" with a hairy covering below (from the Latin peronatus meaning "rough-booted").

Thin

With dense white to yellow hairs at base of stem