Four waxycaps nobody had ever named.

The mushroom world has been introduced to a new mushroom species name with some roots in the PNW and with a SSMC sequencing contribution. With a yell of excitement, Sadie Hickey from SSMC found this mushroom while attending the Key Council meeting near Mt Adams in 2019. The new name has just now been formally introduced, a name also with PNW connections. The mushroom was named in honor of Lorelei Norvell, an extremely well-respected mycologist who worked much of her career in the PNW. Lorelei Norvell was especially interested in Phaeocollybia and is author of Phaeocollybia of the Pacific Northwest North America. Lorelei's interest was very broad, though, and included work with Scott Redhead and Joe Ammirati on the Chromosera genus.

Lorelei and Sadie were both attending the Key Council when Sadie made the collection — and how appropriate that this absolutely gorgeous mushroom will now forever honor Lorelei's name. Unfortunately, Lorelei died in 2023, between the time Sadie collected the mushroom and before it gained species status. There was an obvious excitement as we took turns getting a picture of the mushroom. The picture here is of Lauren taking her turn — you can see the determination and dedication to get a quality picture. Lauren Ré, Sadie, and an old carpenter on Little Skookum — all members of SSMC — are listed as authors on the just-released species paper. Congratulations are in order to Sadie for being a top-notch collector.

Deep in the Olympic Mountains, along an elk trail that only opens up once the animals churn through on their way out of McKay Basin, there’s a tiny mushroom that’s been seen just twice in ten years. It grows in a single remote patch near an ancient old-growth cedar, in a stretch of forest so untouched the Forest Service set it aside as the Monarch Tree Grove. Getting there means driving a rough, often-closed logging road past Lake Cushman and into the headwaters of Four Streams — and in 2025, that whole area came within reach of the Bear Gulch III fire before the flames mysteriously slowed and stopped just short of it. The road, though, was destroyed in the process, and it’s unclear if this hidden mushroom patch will ever be reachable again.

Nicknamed “opposite” for its color scheme — a bright red stem topped by a yellow cap, the reverse of most waxcaps — this little fungus stands out against its white, drooping gills. A sample was first collected and sequenced back in 2019, before scientists had a formal way to flag likely new species, and its DNA has since turned up only two close matches: one from China and one from a California collection that carries the provisional name Hygrocybe sp. ‘PNW15.’ All known vouchered specimens have now been passed along to Lauren Ré, a rising star in mushroom taxonomy, in hopes that detailed microscopy work will finally push this quietly spectacular little waxcap toward official species status.

A species name is a tidy box — a human convenience for filing away something that's actually far too complex to fully untangle. The DNA underneath doesn't always cooperate with the box, and the Hygrocybe conica complex is a good example of the mess that gets simplified away. The true H. conica logs over 16,000 observations on iNaturalist from every corner of the globe; its black-bruising Pacific Northwest look-alike, H. singeri, adds another 5,000. For years Steve and the club assumed Washington only grew H. singeri — until DNA started turning up specimens that blacken like H. singeri in the field but sequence closer to H. conica. Four provisional lineages are now on record: 'conica-PNW22' (11 iNat observations), 'conica-PNW25' (a single high-elevation find in Grays Harbor County), 'conica-PNW27' (one record from Whatcom County), and 'conica-PNW28' — three observations so far, including the specimen pictured here.

This specimen came from Oxen Camp, on Little Skookum Inlet in Mason County, likely named for where the first loggers corralled their oxen teams — a patch of moss under red cedar beside a salmon-bearing creek. It's the only 'conica-PNW28' vouchered with a GenBank sequence, and its closest BLAST match still sits at just 95.7% — the DNA itself won't settle cleanly into the 'conica' box. That gap is wide enough that Steve suspects the whole cluster may never resolve into clean species — more likely a set of varieties. Half-joking, he already has a name ready for this lineage: Hygrocybe conica var. castraboum, Latin for camp of the oxen.

Another mushroom that has a close affinity for its European counterpart and yet is different enough in NA that the taxonomy experts have suggested a new provisional name. Loosely, the PNW in the name suggest this particular form was first identified from the Pacific Northwest based on DNA. That the provisional name has “turunda” within the hash marks suggest it is at a minimum close to this described species from Europe. The ’03’ just means it was the third Hygrocybe to achieve a unique status based on the sequencing efforts of, in this case, SSMC. Only one Hygrocybe will ever be given the 03 designation. It is assumed at some point the provisional name will be retired; some will be moved to species status, some retired for other reasons.

Although I have seen the mushroom a few times, each time it has been in the same bog. A mysterious place of water that moves so slow as to seem to be still water. Much of the year from melting snow the water gathers in tiny sloughs very slowly forming a small pond with an outlet where finally the water gains some momentum as it flows downstream to add its tiny bit of water to the Wynoochee River. The area immediately surrounding the still-like water is devoid of brush or trees. It clearly has a very unique population of mosses and bryophytes and plants that like wet feet. At some point in the distant past this rare waxycap made a partnership with something in this habitat by which it gets its nourishment for survival. What it is partnering with we do not know. Clearly more research is needed to understand this group of mushrooms we affectionately call waxycaps.