Olwen Mason wrote to me that she had found some mushrooms (4 August) in her garden “near a manuka [Leptospermum scoparium] tree and are entirely purple in the stem, gills and cap and give a creamy white spore print. I think they must be a russula but I haven’t found anything that exactly describes them.”

Based on Olwen’s suggestion that it was a Russula I said it might be Russula macrocystidiata and asked her to send me a photo as the purple gills did not sound right for a Russula.

Olwen’s photos show a typical purple funnelcap [Lepista nuda] also known as a blewit. The purple colour is strongest in the young fruit bodies with the purple fading and the cap becoming brown with age. The purple colouring persists in the gills and stem.

Olwen also said “I’m surprised by the spore print here which looks more brown/rust than I remembered. I looked at the original and it is the same as the photo so it’s my memory that is at fault.” Her spore print shows the spores to be a buff to pinkish buff. The literature is a bit confusing with some saying the spore print is “whitish buff with possibly a slightly pinkish tint”, “tan to buff spore print”, “light (white to pale pink)”, and “pale pink”.

Tom Volk at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse writes:

Some systematists place Clitocybe nuda into the genus Lepista, because of its tan to buff spore print. However in almost every other way it is a Clitocybe. We accept many shades of spore color in genera like Russula and Pleurotus, so I think we can accept a slight variation in spore color in Clitocybe – I prefer to follow Howard Bigelow, who wrote a monograph of the genus Clitocybe, and use the name Clitocybe nuda. You are free to use Lepista nuda if you like, but I am basically a “lumper.”

While not abundant the purple funnelcap is probably widespread in parks and gardens throughout New Zealand. There is a photo of it from the Wellington Botanic Garden collected in May this year.

Reference

Volk T 1998. Tom Volk’s Fungus of the Month for November 1998. University of Wisconsin-La Crosse http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/nov98.html