Wood blewit Lepista nuda

Right now

When to look

From October to December. Favourable temperatures: 4 to 13 °C. It usually fruits 5 to 15 days after at least 12 mm of rain.

Where to look

Habitat

Broadleaves, leaf piles, compost heaps; tolerates cool weather

Soil

Neutral soils, rich leaf litter (pH 5.5 to 7.5)

How to recognise it

Cap 4 to 15 cm, fleshy and smooth, a vivid violet-lilac when young then fading towards reddish ochre-brown, with a margin that stays inrolled for a long time. Gills crowded, emarginate, coming away easily from the flesh, a brighter violet than the cap then browning; spore print pale pink on white paper. Stem solid, fibrillose, often slightly bulbous, violet to bluish lilac, pruinose at the top, with no ring or cortina. Flesh thick, bluish, with a sweetish, perfumed smell. A late species of broadleaf and conifer litter alike — decaying leaves, needles and twigs — in forest as well as at woodland edges, in parks and gardens, often in troops or rings; it withstands the first frosts.

Dangerous look-alikes

• Gassy webcap

  Cortinarius traganus
  poisonous

  Remains of a cortina — a cobweb-like veil between the margin and the stem in young specimens, then a rusty-brown zone on the stem — and above all gills brownish yellow from youth, turning rusty brown, with a rusty spore print and never pale pink. Cap pale lilac, soon fading, flesh saffron to yellow-brown beneath the violet tints, fruity smell of overripe pear or of acetylene. Under conifers, especially spruce. The genus Cortinarius includes deadly species: at the slightest rusty veil, discard the entire gathering.

• Goatcheese webcap

  Cortinarius camphoratus
  poisonous

  Same cortina and same rusty spore print. Cap creamy white to pale mauve, yellowing from the centre, gills violet soon turning cinnamon brown, flesh violet at the top and yellow-ochre at the base, and above all a strong, repulsive smell of burnt horn or rotting potato, nothing like the sweetish, perfumed smell of the wood blewit. This smell alone is enough to leave it where it is. Its status varies between authors — ‘of no interest’ according to MycoDB, but described elsewhere as ‘edible, inedible, or somewhat poisonous’: we class it as poisonous as a precaution. Spruce and fir forests on acidic soil.

• Bruising webcap (and the violet webcaps of section Caerulescens)

  Cortinarius purpurascens
  poisonous

  This is the classic beginner's trap, much closer to the wood blewit in colour than the previous two. Cap 3 to 9 cm, sticky, lilac-grey to grey-brown in the centre, covered with dark brown radial fibrils that the wood blewit never has. Two actions give it away: press a finger on the gills and on the flesh, which immediately stain dark violet then purplish pink, whereas those of the wood blewit do not change; and look for the cortina — a cobweb-like veil in young specimens, a rusty-brown zone on the stem later — above a distinctly marginate bulb with a sharp rim. Spore print rusty, not pale pink. This one should be regarded as suspect: many very similar webcaps contain dangerous toxins, and the genus Cortinarius includes two deadly species in France — the fool's webcap (Cortinarius orellanus), known in French as the ‘cortinaire des montagnes’, and the deadly webcap (Cortinarius rubellus) — which cause kidney failure that only appears one to three weeks after the meal. At the slightest rusty veil, discard the entire gathering without trying to identify the species.

• Lilac bonnet

  Mycena pura
  poisonous

  Much smaller and slender (cap 2 to 4 cm), flesh thin and translucent, stem hollow and brittle, strong smell of radish; gills whitish to lilac-pink and not distinctly violet.

Foraging tips

Take a spore print on white paper at the slightest doubt: pale pink in the wood blewit, rusty in webcaps. Always cook for a long time, at least 15 to 20 minutes: the wood blewit is poorly tolerated, or even poisonous, raw or undercooked.

Model reliability

Reliability for this species: moderate.

Also in season

• Chanterelle
• Cep (penny bun)
• Parasol mushroom
• Field mushroom
• Horn of plenty
• Winter chanterelle

Where mushrooms are fruiting this week · All species