Life on the Outer Coast

On Friday the 17th went for a brief walk up Gavan Hill trail. The weather varied between rain (often rather intense) and brief teaser bits of sunshine. I got soaked.
Collected a mushroom that I only had glimpses of last fall, that is when I found this fungus last year, it was pretty far gone. Last years' were growing in the bench muskeg in areas with alot of small pine trees. It was absent from the areas with abundant Carex livida. This year I found one rather chewed up specimen in the muskeg off the quarry road, again in an area with lots of small pines and ericaceous shrubs.

This patch of the mushrooms were growing near Shore pine rather close to the lower part of the trail. Saw a Hermit thrush while looking for additional populations of this mushroom.
The cap and stipe are a dark pink over white. The less developed caps were a bit deeper pink than the larger ones. The larger caps were slightly lighter on the margins. The largest caps were 6 and 7 cm across. The gills are distant, waxy and white with a bit of a pink cast. The gills did show some pink bruising, but I didn't see any with entirely pink gills. The stem was white at the very top, and the rest pink. The end was attenuated and most had a bit of a curve to the lowermost part. The largest were 10 and 11cm long and 1.5 cm in diameter. The cap and stem were quite moist almost sticky, but they dried quickly. I didn't notice any odor and the taste was mild.

I struggled my way through Hesler and Smith's monograph of Hygrophorus to subsection Camarophylli, series Rubentes; H. erubescens seems to be the best fit. I was tempted by the habitat to call this one H. capreolarius, but that species has darker gills. One subspecies of H. erubescens does seem to occur in bogs in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island, so I'll stick with that species for now.

This mushroom doesn't seem to be as robust or bulky as what I've seen eg. http://www.svims.ca/council/illust/Hygrophorus%20erubescens%201%20Michael%20Beug.htm

This photo looks a bit better http://www.flickr.com/photos/23151213@N03/2525032540/in/pool-84638739@N00

The habitat reference was; Macrofungi from six habitats over five years in Clayoquot Sound, Vancouver Island
Christine Roberts, Oluna Ceska, Paul Kroeger, and Bryce Kendrick. 2004. Canadian Journal of Botany 82:1518-1538

I noticed that I decided this mushroom was H. pudorinus var pudorinus last year, not sure why I ignored the lack of a yellow stem base. Must have been desperate to call it something.