This August I found some rather striking small, bright yellow-orange fungi in pots of compost. They were Golden Conecaps, Conocybe aurea.

Golden Conecap on the Allotment

My allotment neighbours Karin and Simon grow some fantastic fruit and vegetables and in summer their greenhouses are full of healthy and productive tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. I sometimes water their plants when they’re away, and they do the same for me.

On 6th August 2025 I was watering some of their pots when I noticed some rather pretty fungi growing in the compost. I didn’t have my camera with me, so I picked a couple of them and brought them home for a closer look.

I was reasonably sure they were a species of Conocybe (conecaps), a genus of saprotrophic fungi that grow on soil, dung, compost heaps, herbaceous litter or woody debris. Funga Nordica has a key to 62 species found in Northern Europe and Geoffrey Kibby illustrates 30 of them (note 1).

Species of Conocybe are not very easy to identify but I was pleased to see an illustration of a brightly coloured species that might be a match for my find, Conocybe aurea, in Volume 4 of Geoffrey Kibby’s “Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain and Europe”.

I did some microscopy and checked the spores and cheilocystidia (cells on the gill edges) and caulocystidia (cells on the stem of the fungus). Everything fitted Conocybe aurea.

I wanted photographs of the fungi in situ but I was out the next day and when I visited the allotment on 8th August, armed with a camera, there was no sign of any.

Luckily the original fruitbodies kept well in the fridge and I took them along to the Norfolk Fungus Study Group AGM the following day and showed them to Tony Leech, the Norfolk County Recorder for fungi. He had seen the species before, in September 2023 when his friend Donna found them growing in compost around a newly planted grape vine in her garden at Melton Constable. That was the first record of Conocybe aurea in Norfolk. He agreed with my identification (note 2).

More fruitbodies appeared during August and the first half of September and I managed to take pictures of Golden Conecaps at various stages of growth in several different pots, growing with cucumber, mint and basil plants in a commercial peat free compost.

Golden Conecap in the British Isles

Conocybe aurea is a rather scarce fungus in the British Isles and just ten records are listed on FRDBI (the Fungal Records Database of the British Isles) at the time of writing. (My record should reach the database next year.)

Not everyone records fungi, even when they’ve identified them, and although Conocybe aurea is very pretty I suspect its identification is often dismissed as being too difficult. (And it doesn’t feature in many illustrated guides to fungi.)

Here is the distribution map for Conocybe aurea in the British Isles:

The earliest records on FRDBI are from September 2010, when Andy Overall found Conocybe aurea on Hampstead Heath in London.

In 2014, he co-wrote an article with Vivien Hodge in Field Mycology entitled “Conocybe aurea, a rare British native or another coloniser?” (note 3) and described how he “spotted some bright yellow fungi fruiting inside a large clay pot, which was being used for growing herbs in a rich compost”.

The article concludes that Conocybe aurea “is recorded from soils rich in nitrate, fertilised meadows, old compost, bark mulch and in greenhouses, as well as freshly sown lawns. Whether this is a genuinely rare British species or an occasional coloniser from elsewhere is not known at present. Any further information that clarifies the origin and status of the species would be of great interest to the authors.”

The story starts earlier than 2010, as Overall & Hodge note that Conocybe aurea was recorded at South Queensferry in Scotland in September 1969 and this led to the species being listed as British (note 4).

Funga Nordica describes the habitat of Conocybe aurea as “on nitrogen rich soil, dung, sawdust, bark litter and fertilized meadows”.

The ten records on FRDBI list the substrate as “soil” (seven records) and “compost” (three records) and the associations are given as “grass” (three records), “Tulip (Tulipa)” and “Spruce (Picea)” (one record each).

Andy Overall included Conocybe aurea in his book “Fungi: Mushrooms & Toadstools of parks, gardens, heaths and woodlands” (2017), which illustrates over 750 species of fungi with beautiful photographs. He describes the habitat as “On nitrogenous soil but also amongst woodchip mulch, in gardens, parkland, cemeteries or open woodland”. He notes that Conocybe aurea isn’t edible (note 6).

Further Afield

Records of Conocybe aurea on the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) mainly come from Europe and North America, but the fungus has been found in South America, Australia and some parts of Asia.

At the time of writing, the United States has most records (163), followed by the Netherlands (85 records) and Switzerland (51). Germany and Denmark are next, followed by the United Kingdom. September and October are the most likely months to find Conocybe aurea.

I do hope I find Conocybe aurea again. But even if I don’t, I feel lucky to have found such these beautiful fungi so close to home.

It was more than enough reward for watering some pots.

Notes

Note 1 – “Funga Nordica: Agaricoid, Boletoid, Clavarioid, Cyphelloid and Gastroid Genera” (2008), edited by Henning Knudsen and Jan Vesterholt (Nordsvamp, Copenhagen). A fantastically detailed book with keys and line drawings of spores, cystidia etc. Sadly out of print but available to download as a PDF.

“Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain & Europe – Volume 4” (2023), by Geoffrey Kibby. Part of a four volume set of books, beautifully illustrated by the author. Still in print.

Note 2 – Tony Leech wrote about this first for Norfolk in “Wildlife Report 2023: Fungi” in Transactions of the Norfolk & Norwich Naturalists’ Society Volume 57, Part 1 (2024).

In October 2023 Geoffrey Kibby posted a lovely picture of Conocybe aurea growing in a post of Cosmos on the British Mycological Society (BMS) Facebook page. I think this is the second record for Norfolk, which would make mine the third.

Note 3 – Field Mycology. Volume 16, Issue 1, January 2015, Pages 14-15.

Note 4 – Watling, R. (1982). British Fungus Flora Vol. 3: Bolbitiaceae. Edinburgh, HMSO. The fungus was growing on a track in woodland by the estuary of the River Forth. The fungus was “distinctive in its beautiful colours… saffron to apricot”. The species was first described by the mycologist Julius Schäffer in 1930 as Galera aurea and renamed Conocybe aurea in 1962 (note 5).

Note 5 – Julius Schäffer (3rd June 1882 – 21st October 1944) was an eminent German mycologist.

Schäffer enjoyed eating Brown Rollrim fungi (Paxillus involutus) at a time when they were considered to be a good edible mushroom. However, in early October 1944 he and his wife ate a meal containing Brown Rollrims and after about an hour he developed vomiting, diarrhoea, and fever. He was admitted to hospital the following day and died of renal failure just over a fortnight later.

It is now known that Paxillus involutus contains an antigen that can eventually (often after consuming the fungus many times over many years) trigger an autoimmune reaction causing the body’s immune cells to attack its own red blood cells.

Modern books on fungi describe Brown Rollrims as “not edible – toxic” but the real danger of eating them has only been understood for the last forty years. Earlier field guides “Collins Guide to Mushrooms & Toadstools” by such as Lange & Hora (1963, but reprinted into the 1980s) say “harmless if cooked, of little value; slightly poisonous to some when raw”.

Wikipedia cheerfully notes: “Despite the poisonings, Paxillus involutus is still consumed in parts of Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, where people die from it every year.”

Note 6 – Sadly, Andy Overall’s book is now out of print but I managed to find a secondhand copy earlier this year. It is too heavy to take out into the field but it has some of the best photographs I’ve seen of a range of fungi found in the London area (but also further afield), accompanied by some very useful text.