Cortinarius Croceus

Cortinarius Croceus, Vancouver Island, BC
Cortinarius Croceus, Vancouver Island, BC, photo by Bud Logan

The Cortinarius Croceus mushroom and the group it belongs to are difficult to identify with any degree of certainty. There are several of them that have an orange-brown cap that looks very similar. Best to see a fruiting that has both young and old specimens. This is the Cortinarius Croceus mushroom, also known as the Saffron Web cap. Not usually a common mushroom here on Vancouver Island, although this year (2019) I have seen them in quite a few spots growing in large fruitings.

This mushroom must be considered poisonous. It is difficult to tell some of these mushrooms apart from each other and several of them are deadly poisonous, I suggest you do not eat any Cortinarius Mushrooms. The Cortinarius mushrooms are called corts, and it’s generally pretty easy to figure out if something is a Cort, but not so easy to ID the species. So many look alike and with some being quite deadly, again I must say, enjoy the look, take a few pics and leave them in the ground.

Cortinarius Croceus, Vancouver Island, BC
Cortinarius Croceus, Vancouver Island, BC, photo by Bud Logan

The Saffron Web cap was first described in 1753 by a German naturalist named Jacob C. Schaeffer who give it the name Agaricus Croceus, in the early days, any mushroom that had gills was given the classification of being in the Agaricus genus, this became a very large genus as you can imagine. This genus eventually began to get divided into smaller groups. In 1821 the mycologist S.F. Frederick moved this mushroom to the genus Cortinarius where it became the Cortinarius Croceus.

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