Aromatic Pinkgill, Entoloma pleopodium.

On Saturday I went on a fungal foray at Gressenhall with Norfolk Fungus Study Group. We saw a great selection of woodland fungi.

Vanna stayed in Norwich and, on the way back from visiting her Mum, went for a wander in Earlham Cemetery in the late afternoon. She brought me back a lovely fungus, one I hadn’t seen before, the Aromatic Pinkgill, Entoloma pleopodium.

Aromatic Pinkgills have previously been found in Norfolk 16 times and the fungus is described by the First Nature website as an occasional find in Britain and Ireland. It also occurs throughout much of mainland Europe, from Scandinavia down to the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula. It was seen in a different part of Earlham Cemetery in 2014.

It’s a very pretty fungus and, if the conditions are right, it has a strong smell of pear drops or ripe apples. There was no smell on Saturday, or on Sunday when Vanna took me to have a look, perhaps because the fungi were rather wet. But on Monday it was sunny and dry and when I showed the fungus to our friend Ian it had a distinctive smell, which reminded me of pear drops, though Ian thought it was more like marshmallow or even bubblegum (note 1).

But the mowers were out in force that day and by the Tuesday there was no sign of Aromatic Pinkgill or any of the other grassland fungi that we’d enjoyed seeing the day before. Another friend visited that day and found short grass, lots of wet grass cuttings and no fungi.

More Aromatic Pinkgills, Entoloma pleopodium.

The fungal fruit bodies we see are like the tip of an iceberg. with most of the fungus existing underground as a mycelium. Mowing removes the above ground parts of the fungus but it lives on underground – albeit unable to spread its spores (or to be noticed and recorded).

Strangely, heavy handed cemetery management may actually help this fungus. The Aromatic Pinkgill favours rich soil, often in places where Stinging Nettles grow and the area where we saw ours was a seam of rich soil, presumably churned up by machinery a year or so before when a tree was planted.

Pinkgill fungi (Entoloma) are members of the family Entolomataceae.  They have pinkish gills and pink spores and variously coloured caps. Most can be found in grassland and several species are indicators of good quality grassland. Entoloma comes from two ancient Greek words: entos (inner) lóma (a fringe or a hem). This is a reference to the inrolled cap margins of many of these fungi.

Nearby, we saw Wood Pinkgills (Entoloma rhodopolium), not quite as pretty and with no noticeable smell.

Wood Pinkgills, Entoloma rhodopolium

And of the Pinkgills that smell, not all are as lovely as the Aromatic Pinkgill. The Mousepee Pinkgill, Entoloma incanum, is said to have an odour reminiscent of caged mice, a fact I can confirm, having found some in North Norfolk a couple of weeks ago.

Notes

Note 1 (Added November 2022) – A week or so after the original Aromatic Pinkgills were cut there were some more, though smaller than the first ones.

I was able to visit the fungi a couple more times, and show them to some friends. We concluded that the way to smell them is to squeeze a piece of the cap and then sniff. This gives a strong and reliable scent of pear drops.