Tasting and spitting Galerina marginata (funeral bell) ☠️
Disclaimer: this fungi contains deadly amatoxins, absolutely do not consume it!*
Taste and spit can be helpful for idenfitying in some limited cases (Russula, Lactarius, boletes for example).
It’s safe as long as nothing is ingested which is required for harm from fungi.
In this case it wasn’t needed for ID, so in general I don’t recommend folks do so with amatoxin containing species, but:
1) I was curious given they’re described as mealy - they were, mild but not horrible.
2) I fairly well know what I’m doing in this regard and hopefully it demonstrates too that fungi aren’t totally terrifying (ie if I can do that, there’s no need for people to be scared of touching them or them merely existing in the world).
These grow on dead wood (preference for conifers but I found it on beech), they have crowded ochraceous cream gills that are adnate or slightly decurrent, gills turn brown as spores drop, have tan caps that start off convex before flatting and are a little striate, tough brown stipes that are silvery streaky under the annulus, and a small annulus (skirt) that can easily detach or degrade. They have hygrophanous caps (where colour changes as they absorb water or dry out - usually lighter at the margin as it dries out, rather than the centre).
It’s a little more uncommon than the more common and larger clustering Kuehneromyces mutabilis.
*They contains amatoxins, which can be deadly if consumed. You can read about Amatoxin toxicity on the Poisons Group, here.
