Cortinarius Iodeoides

Day 43: It shames me to admit it, but there are many things growing on my property which I have never bothered to identify; indeed, many of them might be unidentifiable by the means available to me, although there must be an equal number which should be fairly easy to sort out. Specifically, my yard sprouts mushrooms, most of which I've walked away from feeling assured of sinking in failure before putting a metaphorical toe in the water, but after thirty-plus years of observing them, these little purple guys convinced me that they might not pose as much of a challenge as I expected. I popped the cap off one and found brownish gills and a faint veil where the cap was separating from the stipe. The "spiderweb" veil was sufficient to place my specimen in Cortinarius, and the narrow stipe and lilac colouration suggested C. salor. Just for the heck of it, even though no significant enlargement was present at the base of the stipe, I decided to do a quick chem test to assure myself that it wasn't C. olympianus. Nope, the flesh did not turn red when I dripped ammonia on it. I will still beg my readers to allow me the right to be wrong. Cortinarius is a huge genus and I do not have descriptions for all the species it contains, but given that C. salor is common in our woods, that will be what I call this little lilac 'shroom until someone corrects me.

Update: examination of the spores has caused me to re-evaluate my original identification. I now believe this to be C. iodeoides. See post for 28 November 2020 for further details.