Sugar dung beetle (Coprinellus saccharinus) photo and description

Sugar dung beetle (Coprinellus saccharinus)

• Coprinus saccharine Romagn (obsolete)

Bibliography: Coprinellus saccharinus (Romagna) P. Roux, Guy Garcia & Dumas, A Thousand and One Fungi: 13 (2006)

The species was first described by Henri Charles Louis Romagnesi in 1976 with the name Coprinus saccharinus. As a result of phylogenetic studies conducted at the turn of the 2006th and XNUMXst centuries, mycologists established the polyphyletic nature of the genus Coprinus and divided it into several types. The modern name recognized by Index Fungorum was given to the species in XNUMX.

head: small, in young mushrooms it can be up to 30 mm wide and 16-35 mm high. Initially ovoid, then widens to bell-shaped, and finally to convex. The diameter of the cap of an adult mushroom is up to 5 cm. The surface is radially striated, ocher-brown, brownish, light brown in color, darker at the top, brownish, rusty-brown, lighter towards the edges. Covered with whitish very small fluffy flakes or scales – the remnants of a common coverlet. Young specimens have more of them; in adult mushrooms, they are often almost completely washed away by rain or dew. These scales under the microscope:

The cap is distinctly finely ribbed from the edge and almost to the very top.

During maturation, like other dung beetles, it “drains ink”, but not completely.

plates: free or weakly adherent, frequent, 55-60 full plates, with plates, narrow, white or whitish in young mushrooms, later – gray, brownish, brown, then turn black and blur, turning into black “ink”.

Leg: smooth, cylindrical, 3-7 cm high, rarely up to 10 cm, up to 0,5 cm thick. White, fibrous, hollow. A thickening with the remains of a common veil is possible at the base.

Ozonium: missing. What is “Ozonium” and how it looks – in the article Homemade dung beetle.

Pulp: thin, brittle, whitish in the cap, white, fibrous in the stem.

Smell and taste: without features.

Spore powder imprint: the black.

Microscopic Features

Споры ellipsoid or slightly similar to mitriforms (in the shape of a bishop’s hat), smooth, thick-walled, with germinal pores 1,4–2 µm wide. Dimensions: L = 7,3–10,5 µm; W = 5,3-7,4; Q = 1,27–1,54, Qm: 1,40.

Pileocystidia and calocystidia are absent.

Cheilocystidia numerous, large, cylindrical, 42–47 x 98–118 µm.

Similar pleurocystidia 44–45 x 105–121 µm in size.

Fruiting from late summer to autumn.

Sugar dung beetle is widely distributed in Europe, but is rare. Or it is all too often mistaken for the much better known Twinkling Duckweed (Coprinellus micaceus).

Saprotroph. It develops in deciduous and mixed forests, lawns, in gardens and squares on rotting twigs, woody residues, fallen trunks and stumps, on a litter of fallen leaves. It can grow on wood buried in the ground. Forms small patches.

There is no reliable data, there is no consensus.

A number of sources indicate that the sugar dung beetle is conditionally edible, as is the flickering dung beetle close to it, that is, only the caps of young mushrooms should be collected, preliminary boiling from 5 to 15 minutes is necessary.

A number of sources classify it as an inedible species.

We will carefully place the Sugar Dung beetle in the category of inedible mushrooms and ask our readers not to experiment on themselves: let the experts do it. Moreover, believe me, there is nothing special to eat there, and the taste is so-so.

Flickering dung beetle (Coprinellus micaceus)

Morphologically, the Sugar dung beetle does not differ much from the Flickering dung beetle, both species grow in similar conditions. The only difference is the color of the scales on the hat. In Flickering, they shine like fragments of mother-of-pearl, in Sugar, they are simply white. At the microscopic level, C. saccharinus is distinguished by the absence of calocystids, the size and shape of the spores – ellipsoidal or ovoid, less pronounced miter than in Flicker.

For a complete list of similar species, “Flicker-Like Dung”, see Flicker Dung.

Photo: Sergey.