A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
deceiver
The deceiver is Laccaria laccata, a small, common, unremarkable woodland mushroom in a dull reddish tan, with thick widely spaced gills and a tough fibrous stem. It grows in numbers in leaf litter in partnership with tree roots. It changes color as it dries, going from tan to buff to nearly white, and its shape varies enough from specimen to specimen that beginners routinely record two or three finds from one patch.
Etymology
The English name was given for exactly that habit and is unusually candid about the difficulty rather than the mushroom. What lies underneath it is a property called hygrophany, which means a fungus changes color as it loses water, so a specimen photographed at nine in the morning and one photographed at four in the afternoon do not look like the same species. The amethyst deceiver is the violet member of the same genus and does the same thing.