Flesh: with no distinctive smell, reddish-brown and very thin.
Spore-print: white.
Spores: medium sized, hyaline, ellipsoid to pip-shaped, smooth about 10 µm long (9-10 × 4-5 µm) and becoming bluish grey when mounted in solutions containing iodine.
Marginal cystidia: awl-shaped, pointed at the apex, swollen below and filled with dark red-brown contents.
Facial cystidia: absent.
Habitat & Distribution: Solitary or in small groups on poorly kept lawns, in woods and copses; it is particularly frequent in the beds of needles found in pine woods.
General Information: This fungus is easily recognised by the slender habit, reddish juice exuded when broken and habitat preferences. Mycena haematopus (Fries) Kummer is larger and grows in tufts on wood, but also has a red-brown juice which, however, spots the gills. Another very common species of Mycena is M. galopus (Fries) Kummer which has a greyish or brownish cap and exudes a milk-like juice. The related M. leucogala (Cooke) Saccardo is almost black (see [p. 216]). These agarics exuding juice when broken have a flesh composed of filaments, a very different flesh-structure to species of Lactarius (see [p. 50]) and although their spores are amyloid they do not turn blue-black in iodine because of the presence of amyloid crests and warts. There are few additional species of agaric which exude a milk-like liquid, but the majority of these are tropical or subtropical. The second names or epithets for the four species mentioned above all refer to the ‘latex’—sanguinolenta—bleeding, haematopus blood-foot; galopus, milk-foot and leucogala, white milk. For notes on Mycena one is referred to [p. 68] describing M. galericulata (Fries) S. F. Gray.
Illustrations: WD 284.
Plate 23. Fleshy, milking fungi: Spores white and borne on gills
