Last year, Michele published an article on a spectacular bluish purple mushroom popping up on the village green.
Earlier this week I noticed that the same purple mushroom was now growing as a fairy ring over 5m in diameter out in the open area of the village green. A semi-circle of large light mauve mushrooms was quite a sight.
After a misidentification by me last year, the correct name Lepista sublilacina was provided by Barry and Jenn Muir from Cairns. It has been called the Australian Blewit. A closely related species (or possibly the same species as) is the Lilac Blewit (L. sordida) which is a common edible northern hemisphere species that is known to form fairy rings. Both species are recognised by the Atlas of Living Australia and have been recorded in Queensland but the characters used to distinguish the two species are not readily available from a web search. They are commonly found on lawns and gardens.
There are at least two websites in Australia that suggest the Lepistra sublilacina/sordida is edible but my recommendation would be not to try to eat them until you have conducted your own investigation on this.
This species is just one of many that have been popping up all around Paluma. I will dedicate a separate post to these in the near future.
Text and Photos by Jamie Oliver
Thanks Jamie for this post and the additional information on the identification of these spectacular mushrooms. Judging from your photos, your siting of these mushrooms looks to be in the same place that I observed them last wet season. I recall that when I told several people I had seen ‘bright purple mushrooms’ at the Village Green, a few remarked that perhaps I had been sampling some magic mushrooms instead!