Agaricus flocculosipes – an edible species of the arvensis clade – updated!

I would have sworn this mushroom was Agaricus augustus and it seemed to have many of its macroscopic characteristics. So I was very surprised to get a DNA sequence for this mushroom confirming via several hits on BLASTN that this mushroom’s sequence was 1% away from several sequences of Agaricus flocculosipes.

This species was first described from Thailand from the arvensis clade of Agaricus although this species was reported as larger and potentially a great cultivation option.

Thanks to Wayne Boatwright in South Eastern Queensland for being kind enough to authorise the use of these photos so that the record can be kept here for interest purposes.

While Agaricus can be hard to start from spore im hoping we can get a culture of this guy going!

Thanks Wayne – these photos are copyright Wayne Boatwright.

More recently Jonas from Kingfisher Mushrooms up in NNSW found this species and independently confirmed his collection as being also Agaricus flocculosipes so we have independent verification that its out there. On Phylogenetic trees this species is very close (within 97%) of some type collections of Agaricus augustus and even closer to several recent finds in Australia that all sit within section arvensis including a mushroom 1% from Agaricus megalocarpus – another Asian arvensis species.

More details can be found at:

https://kingfishermushrooms.wordpress.com/2018/03/06/agaricus-aff-flocculosipes/