Sweetbread
Clitopilus prunulus
Habitat: Scattered or in groups on the ground in open woods. I found mine growing on the trail.
Cap: 2-4" wide, convex to flat, dry, felty, margin wavy with age. Flesh firm, white.
Gills: Nearly descending stalk, white at first, becoming pale pink.
Stalk: 1 5/8 to 3 1/4" long, 1/8 to 5/8" thick. Often off-center, hairless, dull white.
Spore print: salmon pink.
Season: June through September
It has been found on BMC forays at:
Rocky Woods - Trustees of Reservations, MEDFIELD, 08/01/2004
Flagg Hill - conservation area, STOW, 08/29/2004
Purgatory Chasm, SUTTON, 10/02/2004,
08/10/2003
Harold Parker
State Park, ANDOVER, 09/28/2003
Stow Town
Forest, STOW, 07/20/2003
The above picture I got off the Internet. This is
before I realized that I had found Sweetbread in Sutton. I was looking
over my pictures and studying the guides during the winter of 2004-05 when I
realized that I found the mushroom but did not ID it at that time. The cap on the
right looks the right shape but unnatural colors. The stem on the specimen on the left
looks too long.
Below is one I took a picture of on 7/8/04 at Purgatory
Chasm, Sutton MA. Did not ID it until winter :o)
It was a Siamese twin.
Below is the underside of the twin shown above.
In 2005 I first found it on 7/16 in Westboro. There
were a pair of them.
These were kidney shaped, like so many of them are.
Here is the underside.
The gills look salmon pink on my monitor, sort of.
8/9 I found one specimen that measured 2.75" of the
largest dimension of the cap.
A typical stubby stalk. The mushroom looks like it has no stem, just a cap
lying on the ground.
Top view.
In this one there is no deep indentation so not kidney shape.
Underside.
Stubby stalk, pinkish gills.
I do not smell any "bread dough" smell. What I remember when I was young and my mother would bake bread, the dough smelled sour and yeasty. There is no yeasty smell, as far I am concerned, from this mushroom, so I have doubts about my ID.
On, 8/10/05, I got a good spore print from this last specimen.
It was deposited on black plastic.
On my monitor it looks pinkish, light tan. Very close to the actual spore
print color. It might look different on your monitor. I have to use
a lot of imagination to interpret this to be "salmon pink" that the guides
specify. Mycologists have to adopt a standard color scheme to eliminate
these confusing color identifications.
So I am still not sure If I have Sweetbread or not. Those of you who know this mushroom, what do you think? Is it Sweetbread or not? Please let me know. Thanks.