| Author | Boertmann, D. |
| Year | 2010 |
| Title | The Genus Hygrocybe (2nd ed) |
| ISBN | 9788798358176 |
| Series | Fungi of Northern Europe |
| Type | Book/Report |
| How Complete | Covers all species of Northern Europe known at the time. This includes all the UK species. |
| Source | Fungi of Northern Europe, Vol 1, Second edition edition, 200pp, Danish Mycological Society |
| Illustrations | Colour photographs of fruitbodies, line drawings of spores |
| Review (by Malcolm Storey) | Full descriptions and country distribution maps for Nordic area (including UK). Dichotomous keys to fresh material using macroscopical characters, and dried material using the microscope. Boertmann makes Hygrocybe identifiable by taking a broad species concept and synonymising a number of species where the differences were unworkable. The second edition includes many new pictures. Indispensible, but be aware of subsequent research. |
| Errata, Corrigenda & Comments | The sporograms seem to represent the range of shapes for a species rather than a sample of average spores, so the spores in a given prep will look much more homogeneous. |
| News | The first edition of Boertmann’s monograph recognised 48 spp and 10 varieties. This simplified Orton’s key in the 1960 checklist Part III, which recognised 64 spp. Boertmann’s broad species concept united several similar fungi around H. acutoconica, and to a lesser extent, around H. virginea, H. conica and H. psittacina. These were difficult taxa to distinguish, often separated on spore size, and this made identification much easier. In 2013 DNA work (Ainsworth et al) showed that colour variants of H. psittacina should be recognised as 3 or 4 separate species. Further work will likely show that H. acutoconica and H. conica also represent species groups. |
| Examine |  Compound Microscope |
| Specimen Preparation | Separate keys to fresh material and to dried specimens |
| Identification difficulty | Still a difficult group, especially from dried material. |
