#purple fungi

London, UK, January 2022

Field blewit (Lepista saeva)

Gorgeous little specimen - one of 5 or 6 that I spotted on a roadside verge on my cycle home from work, which came home with me and topped a noodle soup.

I’m kinda proud that I can now spot these from above! Unlike their cousins, the wood blewit, which have a distinct purple cap, field blewits are a more modest buff brown. Like a lot of fungi, though, with a lot of hunting and spotting and practise you start to just ‘get a feel’ for what they look like and spot them more easily, before using more distinct features (such as the purple stem) to make a definitive positive ID.