Yesterday the sun was shining brightly and the wind was fresh. it was a nice break from the endless cloudy days and intermittent rain and snow we have been having for a month now. so i set out along the path to the seashore. it's the tail end of the season so wasn't expecting much of any fungi. but then
whoa. what is that? nothing i recognized, growing so low and with that strange stipe coming out of the ground.
very odd looking and interesting
so i lifted it's 'skirt' to have a look down there. and lol and behold if that isn't a blewit. i mean it has the stipe and the gills and it is definitely blewit season. but it is growing out here in the open grassy, shrubby terrain, directly from the dirt so it can't be my friend Lepista nuda the wood blewit.
what looked like the stipe from above wasn't a stipe at all but an oddly shaped part of the hat. i was convinced that it had to be a kind of blewit, maybe some less common cousin.
now back to that funny hat. the norwegian name for blewit is 'ridderhatt' which means knight's hat or helmet. i never understood why but looking at this i started imagining some medieval knight with a helmet extending down the back of his neck to avoid getting his head chopped off from behind!
then i spotted a closeby group of normal looking fungi that must be the same species, so i determined that i had found an unfamiliar species of blewit that grows directly in the ground.
i made my way to the shore where the waves were crashing on the rocks and found a high and dry spot out of the worst wind. i thoroughly enjoyed the moment in the sun and sea air. something about crashing waves and waterfalls gives a sense of exhiliration. i've heard it has to do with negative ions.
anyway, back home i presearched: 'ridderhatt' and quickly discovered
Lepista personata (also recognised as Lepista saeva, Clitocybe saeva and Tricholoma personatum, and commonly known as the field blewit and blue-leg). ...
sure enough, that's the one. but what's with the 4 scientific names??
i thought the idea was to have one universally agreed-upon designation so everybody was sure we are talking about the same thing, regardless of language or any number of regional or colloquial names.
