A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1054 entries
amethyst deceiver
Laccaria amethystina, a small woodland mushroom that is an improbable violet all the way through — cap, stem, and widely spaced gills — when it is fresh and wet. It grows out of leaf litter in partnership with the roots of oak and beech. As it dries, it loses the color entirely, going lilac, then buff, then nothing much, which is the whole point of the name.
Etymology
Amethyst is Greek amethystos, “not drunken,” from a- (not) and methyein (to be intoxicated) — the stone was held to prevent drunkenness, and the Greeks are said to have drunk from amethyst cups on that basis. Deceiver is the older English name for the whole genus. These mushrooms are hygrophanous, meaning they change color as they lose water, so the same species presents differently at nine in the morning and four in the afternoon.