The Best Photo of The Week - Clitopilus Prunulus AKA Muscle Sponge

alein (70)memberAquilain Italy • 3 years ago (edited)

My mushroom today is Clitopilus prunulus, which as a name, although it would refer to plums, but it has nothing to do with these noble fruits,

so appreciated by our co-citizens who own a pressure boiler connected to a cooling coil; which on the eve of winter "sits" at the mouth of the stove to collect drop by drop the sweat of the plum; the cure for all diseases and the elixir of youth.

No, the mushroom has nothing to do with all this; we call it the Muscle Sponge for its floury smell and appearance. Its smell is specific, some say it would be very floury, others claim that it would be more like the stuffy smell of old mills, and other opinions support a smell that is somewhat reminiscent of cucumbers. But whatever it is, this smell is transient and disappears with the heat treatment of the fungus. Her hat is also floury, in the sense that it is covered with a white powder, hence the epithet of the name prunulus.

Clitopilus prunulus also called the muscle sponge, like a mushroom, is relatively easy to identify, because it has some characteristic elements: salmon-pink spores; a whitish-gray hat, sometimes with wavy edges, covered with a white powder; decurrent white blades, which in time will take on the color of spores; the characteristic floury smell.