Field Blewits (Lepista saeva) Identification

Field blewit / Autumn / Edible

Strobilomyces, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Horst74, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Lukas from London, England, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Scientific name

Lepista (clytocybe) saeva

Strobilomyces, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Family

Tricholomataceae

Habitat

Grasslands and sometimes in open woodland. Preferring limestone or chalk.

Description

Medium sized whitish capped mushroom, its most distinguishing feature is its purple stem.

Identifying features:

Cap:

Smooth pale buff brown to cream coloured cap that can look like it has a transparent film on the top showing the colour underneath, dome shaped when young with a slightly enrolled rim, with age it flattens and can have a wavy edge.

Stem:

4-6cm tall, that has purple striated fibres. the stem is solid and sometimes bulbous at the base.

Gills:

The gills are whitish cream becoming pinkish buff with age, free of the stem and crowded.

Smell:

Floral a little like earl grey tea.

Spores:

white/ pale pinkw

Lukas from London, England, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Uses

Great edible.

In Food

This mushroom is excellent fried, dried and added to soups and stews. They’ve a slightly nutty flavour.

Known Hazards

Must be cooked can cause gastric upset when raw

Potential lookalikes

Wood Blewit, but this has purple gills.

There are a number of cortinarous (web cap) mushrooms that have purple stems, webcaps have a rusty brown spore print. (Always spore print if your not sure as some of the purple webcaps can be toxic