Lepista nuda

Foto © Marco Floriani - Tovare (Dimaro, TN), X.1998

Lepista nuda

(Fr. : Fr.) Cooke

The so-called 'bluewit' is certainly one of the most beautiful mushrooms you can meet. Its deep blue-violet colour, present on the cap, gills and stipe fades a little with age, and only the young specimens have the intense colours shown in the photograph. A good help to recognize this species is its fragant, particular smell. Lepista nuda has often been confused with some similarly coloured harmless species of Cortinarius. To avoid this confusion the most useful characters are the presence of a cortina in the genus Cortinarius and the different colour of the gills when mature (lilac in Lepista nuda, rust brown in the genus Cortinarius). (m.f.)