Wax Caps: Hygrocybe Group

The mushrooms in this group typically belong to meadows and have bright colours, for example the scarlet which makes H. puniceus so noticeable.

McIlvaine (1902), with characteristic enthusiasm, quotes a Professor Peck as saying of H. miniatus, a small species which occurs in both Europe and N. America and is typically yellow-red, that it ‘is scarcely surpassed by any mushrooms in tenderness of substance and agreeableness of flavour’; and makes a point of saying that he himself often ate H. conica (one of a couple of slightly suspect members of the group) with impunity and pleasure. But few people nowadays exploit these less familiar species.