Trooping Crumble Cap

Trooping Crumble Cap - iNaturalist

The trooping crumble cap can be found in Europe, North America, Asia, South America, and Australia

I was so excited when I saw these mushrooms. I’ve always enjoyed taking photos of mushrooms, and I’ve always enjoyed macro photography. These mushrooms are the perfect combination of the two. Jill and I were on a hike on the island of Oahu in Hawai’i. We were spending the day doing hikes around Honolulu. This hike went to Mānoa Falls following the ‘Aihualama trail. To start the hike, we had to park in the Lyon Arboretum. There was a steady flow of people that were making the short hike up to the falls. We took the start of the hike quickly so that we could get a good early view of the falls. That meant that on the way back we took our time, and I took lots of photos. It was such a surprise to find these mushrooms on this decaying tree and the bigger cluster of them on the inside.

Plateful of Pyramids

The trooping crumble cap is a small mushroom in the Psathyrellaceae family of mushrooms. It tends to grow in large groups. This is where the “trooping” part of its common name comes from. It also goes by the common names: fairy bonnet and fairy inkcap. Its scientific name is Coprinellus disseminatus. It was formerly known as the Coprinus disseminatus. Its species name was given to it in 1939 by Jakob Emanuel Lange. The trooping crumble cap can be found in Europe, North America, Asia, South America, and Australia.

The cap of the trooping crumble cap is .5 to 1.5 centimeters. They look like winter caps and flatten as they open out. This mushroom starts white, fade to grey as they age, and then finally turn to black when the spores mature. Unlike most inkcap mushrooms, they do not dissolve into an inky fluid when they mature. The stems of the mushroom are thin, hollow, fragile, and white.

Flat Crep

In the Coprinellus genus are 62 total species. The Coprinellus micaceus, which is also known as the mica cap, glistening inky cap, or the shiny cap, grows in clusters similar to the trooping crumble cap. The domestic inky cap, also known as the firerug inkcap, is another species in the genus. It has a bright orange carpet of hyphae that grows around the mushroom. The Coprinellus heptemerus is known to occur on the dung of goats and possibly that of sheep.

Mushroom Among Moss

The shiny cap, grows in clusters similar to the trooping crumble cap

Did you know?

A group of mushrooms is called a “cluster” or a “troop”.
In the Psathyrellaceae family of fungi 50% of the species dissolve into ink-like ooze through autodigestion once the spores have matured.

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