Humidicutis taekeri, growing in Australia
The genus Humidicutis contains approximately eighteen known species worldwide. Nine species, including Humidicutis taekeri, have been recorded in Australia; others are native to North America, Central America and Europe. A collection of photographs of some of the other beautiful Humidicutis species has been published by the Atlas of Living Australia.
Members of the genus are identified primarily by their bright pigments and moist, conical caps (Humidicutis means “moist skin”) that crack radially when fully expanded. Other unifying characteristics include the absence of clamp connections and hymenophoral tramas with short, interwoven hyphae as opposed to parallel hyphae. The fruiting bodies produce smooth, colourless spores larger than 7 μm in diameter, and possess lamellae that are emarginate or adnate but not strongly decurrent.
Humidicutis was originally described by Rolf Singer in 1959. As of the publication of The Agaricales in Modern Taxonomy (3rd ed., J Cramer, 1975), Singer recognized three species: Humidicutis czuica, Humidicutis marginata (and var. olivacea), and Humidicutis rosella. At the time, Humidicutis was classified as a subgenus of Hygrocybe; Humidicutis has since been reassigned as its own genus within the Hygrophoraceae (PDF).
The colourful pigments present in members of Humidicutis were studied by William Ganley Cibula at the University of Massachusetts. In his 1976 doctoral dissertation, The Pigments of Hygrophorus Section Hygrocybe, and Their Significance in Taxonomy and Phylogeny, Cibula reported that Humidicutis spp. characteristically contain polyene pigments, while members of Hygrocybe contain rhodohygrocybin and/or flavohygrocybin pigments.
Daniel adds: For additional (re)reading, the May 2005 BPotD entries have all been updated / repaired / tagged / and so on.
What a gorgeous ‘shroom! Thanks for this post! Wow!
That looks like something you’d see AFTER you ate it.
Heh, good one!
That is both beautiful and scary.
so interesting!
Looks like the sunflower of the mushroom world.
Man Australia, you have some of the weirdest stuff! And I mean that in the best way.
Looks like something by Dale Chihuly!
Amazingly beautiful!
Perhaps a silly question: is the green chlorophyll? Could this mushroom be capable of photosynthesis?
Not silly. No, it isn’t capable of photosynthesis (no one’s discovered a fungus capable of that yet). The pigments are some form of polyenes (linked to in the entry), to quote Wikipedia’s entry:
As to which pigments are present, that seems to be unknown as yet. From Molecular phylogeny, morphology, pigment chemistry and ecology in Hygrophoraceae (Agaricales) (PDF):
Presumably, betalains are absent in this species as well.
and
The orange colouration may therefore be akin to the orange pigment of carrots (re: carotenoids), but it doesn’t look like the research has been done. No speculation on my part re: the green other than it isn’t chlorophyll-based.
Only in nature do we see such beauty. Thanks Madeline Iseminger for the feature and Ken Beath for the photo.
Really beautiful, is it edible or medicinal?
Likely undocumented for both. Other species in the family cause gastrointestinal distress at the least, but that isn’t that informative.