Wood blewit

How to recognise it: wood blewit

1. 1

   Whole fruit body violet in young specimens

2. 2

   No cortina and no ring

3. 3

   Pale pink spore print

4. 4

   Spicy smell

5. 5

   Late autumn, leaf litter, fairy rings

Description

Cap

5–15 cm, bright violet or lilac when young, then brownish-violet, ochre-brown when old; smooth, matt, margin long inrolled.

Gills

Gills crowded, thin, emarginate, clearly violet when young, then brownish. Spore print pale pink (cream-pink) – NEVER rusty.

Stem

5–12 cm, violet with white fibrils, then grey-violet, solid, club-shaped at the base with violet mycelium; no ring and no cortina.

Flesh

Fleshy, violet-tinged when young, later cream; does not change colour when cut.

Smell and taste

Smell pleasant, spicy or fruity (sometimes aniseed-like); taste mild.

Where and when it grows

Saprotrophic on leaf and needle litter in broadleaf forests (especially beech woods) and coniferous forests (spruce forests), also in parks, gardens, on compost and meadows; in groups, rows and fairy rings. Single fruit bodies sometimes in May; main flush September–November, sometimes even in snow.

Most often with: beech, spruce

Where are conditions good today?

Look-alikes: what it can be mistaken for

• 

  Fool's webcap Deadly poisonous medium risk

  Violet webcaps (e.g. the violet webcap, and “zasłonak wonny” – inedible, bitter, unpleasant-smelling) have a cobweb-like cortina when young and a RUSTY-BROWN spore print. Take a spore print: wood blewit – pale pink, webcaps – rusty. The genus Cortinarius includes deadly poisonous species (e.g. the fool's webcap).

  Step-by-step comparison: Wood blewit or fool's webcap →

In the kitchen

Always cook thoroughly or fry – never raw. Good for pickling in vinegar, frying, can be frozen. Rarely maggoty. Sometimes cultivated on compost.

Watch out for toxins

Raw – a heat-labile haemolytic substance (destroys red blood cells); harmless after cooking.

Protection and sale

• Species protection: the species is not protected.
• Sale: the species is on the list of mushrooms approved for sale (it may be sold only with a mushroom inspector’s certificate). Listed in Annex 1 as “gąsówka fioletowawa – Clitocybe nuda”.

Where you may pick mushrooms →