A safe mushroom for the novice forager as there are no look-a-likes in the UK.
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Field Blewit
(40 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Field Blewit
| Mushroom Type | |
| Common Names |
Field Blewit (EN), Pied-Violet (FR), Blue-Leg (US), Coes Las y Maes (CY), GΔ sΓ³wka Dwubarwna (PL), LilatΓΆnkΕ± Pereszke |
| Scientific Name |
Lepista personata |
| Synonyms |
Collybia personata, Lepista saeva, Clitocybe saeva |
| Season Start |
Oct |
| Season End |
Jan |
| Average Mushroom height (CM) |
6 |
| Average Cap width (CM) |
12 |
Please note that each and every mushroom you come across may vary in appearance to these photos.
Cap
Greyish brown to beige and very smooth. Starting convex becoming flattened or even depressed with an inrolled margin in younger specimens.
Stem
Off white with a blue/lilac, vertically fiborous covering. Chunky short and often swollen at the base.
Spore Print
Off white to Pale pink. Ellipsoid with small spines. You should scrape your spores into a small pile to get an accurate spore colour.
Taste / Smell
Perfumed and mushroomy. MustΒ be cooked before consumption.
Frequency
Uncommon.
Other Facts
A great tasting mushroom with a good texture and usually growing in rings or groups. This mushroom keeps growing into winter and only a really harsh frost will finish them off, I have found some in February before.
The Blewits like the cold and only start to appear when the temperature is constantly below 17 degrees.
Must be cooked before consumption.
The recent phylogeny studies shook up the taxonomy of clitocyboid species. Based on the phylogeny studies ofΒ He, Chen, Bau, Wang & Yang (2023), many rushed to move all the formerΒ LepistaΒ species into the genusΒ Collybia, however, not everyone agrees with this change.Β He & Yang (2024)Β proposed to conserve the genusΒ ClitocybeΒ and place all the formerΒ LepistaΒ species into the genusΒ Clitocybe, but as a section. It would definitely make sense, asΒ LepistaΒ species were historicallyΒ ClitocybeΒ species, and just later got their own genus.
At Wild Food UK we arenβt taxonomists, and from a foragerβs perspective these changes have no relevance, so we stick to the old genus name,Β LepistaΒ for our Blewits (and reserving the right of being wrong in this sense).
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