Lyophyllum atigi (Lyophyllum loricatum) ata ma faʻamatalaga

Lyophyllum shell (Lyophyllum loricatum)

• Rows are armored

• Agaric loricatus
• Tricholoma loricatum
• Gyrophila cartilaginea

ulu lyophyllum armored with a diameter of 4-12 (rarely up to 15) cm, in youth spherical, then hemispherical, then from flat-convex to prostrate, can be either flat, or with a tubercle, or depressed. The contour of the cap of an adult mushroom is usually irregular in shape. The skin is smooth, thick, cartilaginous, and may be radially fibrous. The margins of the cap are even, ranging from tucked in when young to possibly turned upwards with age. For mushrooms whose caps have reached the prostrate stage, especially those with convex edges, it is often characteristic, but not necessary, that the cap edge is waviness, up to a significant one.

The color of the cap is dark brown, olive brown, olive black, gray brown, brown. In old mushrooms, especially with high humidity, it can become lighter, turning into brownish-beige tones. May fade to a fairly bright brown in full sun.

Pulp  Lyophyllum armor white, brownish under the skin, dense, cartilaginous, elastic, breaks with a crunch, often cut with a creak. In old mushrooms, the pulp is watery, elastic, grayish-brownish, beige. The smell is not pronounced, pleasant, mushroom. The taste is also not pronounced, but not unpleasant, not bitter, perhaps sweetish.

faamaumauga  lyophyllum armor medium-frequent, accreted with a tooth, widely accreted, or decurrent. The color of the plates is from white to yellowish or beige. In old mushrooms, the color is watery-gray-brown.

spore pauta white, light cream, light yellowish. Spores are spherical, colorless, smooth, 6-7 μm.

vae 4-6 cm high (up to 8-10, and from 0.5 cm when growing on mowed lawns and on trampled ground), 0.5-1 cm in diameter (up to 1.5), cylindrical, sometimes curved, irregularly curved, fibrous. Under natural conditions, more often central, or slightly eccentric, when growing on mowed lawns and trampled ground, from significantly eccentric, almost lateral, to central. The stalk above is the color of the fungus plates, possibly with a powdery coating, below it can become from light brown to yellow-brown or beige. In old mushrooms, the color of the stem, like the plates, is watery-gray-brown.

The armored lyophyllum lives from the end of September until November, mainly outside the forests, in parks, on lawns, on embankments, slopes, in grass, on paths, on trampled land, near curbs, from under them. Less common in deciduous forests, on the outskirts. May be found in meadows and fields. Mushrooms grow together with legs, often in large, very dense groups, up to several dozen fruiting bodies.

• Lyophyllum crowded (Lyophyllum decastes) – A very similar species, and lives in the same conditions and at the same time. The main difference is that in the lyophyllum of the crowded plate, from adherent with a tooth, to practically free, and in the armored one, on the contrary, from adherent with a tooth, insignificant, to descending. The remaining differences are conditional: crowded lyophyllum has, on average, lighter tones of the cap, softer, non-creaky flesh. Adult mushrooms, at an age when the cap is everted, and the plates of the specimen are adherent with a tooth, it is often not possible to distinguish them, and even their spores are of the same shape, color and size. On young mushrooms, and mushrooms of middle age, according to the plates, they usually reliably differ.
• Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus) (various species) The mushroom is very similar in appearance. Formally, it differs only in that in oyster mushrooms the plates descend on the leg smoothly and slowly, to zero, while in lyophyllum they break off quite sharply. But, most importantly, oyster mushrooms never grow in the ground, and these lyophyllums never grow on wood. Therefore, it is extremely easy to confuse them in a photograph, or in a basket, and this happens all the time, but never in nature!

Lyophyllum shell refers to conditionally edible mushrooms, is used after boiling for 20 minutes, universal use, similar to crowded row. However, due to the density and elasticity of the pulp, its palatability is lower.

Photo: Oleg, Andrey.