Wine Cap

Stropharia rugosoannulata

Edible

Also called king stropharia, garden giant, burgundy mushroom.

The wine cap is a large, wine-red mushroom of wood-chip mulch, garden beds and straw. It turns up on its own in landscaping and is also grown on purpose in home gardens. Big red-brown mushrooms in fresh mulch are usually this.

The underside of a wine cap held in a hand, showing gray-violet gills and a thick pale stem

The tell

A wine-red cap over purple-gray gills, with a thick ring whose underside is split into claw-like segments.

Field marks

What to look at

Cap, underside and stem show in a photo. The spore print does not, and it is often the deciding check.

Cap
Convex, flattening with age, 2 to 6 inches across and sometimes much larger. Wine red to reddish brown when young, fading to tan or buff. Smooth and slightly sticky when wet.
Underside
Gills attached and crowded. Whitish when young, becoming gray, then purple-gray to purple-black as the spores mature.
Stem
Thick and white, often enlarged at the base with white root-like strands. A thick ring, grooved on top and split underneath into claw-like segments, sits high on the stem and darkens with spores.
Flesh
White and firm. Smell mild.
Spore print
Dark purple-brown to purple-black.
Size
Cap 2 to 6 inches (5 to 15 cm), sometimes up to 10 inches (25 cm); stem 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 cm) tall.

Where and when

Where and when it grows

Habitat
In wood-chip mulch, garden beds, compost, straw and disturbed ground in yards, parks and on the edges of woods.
Grows on
Wood chips, straw and rich, woody debris.
Season
Spring through fall.
Range
Across North America, most common in landscaped areas where wood-chip mulch is used.

Lookalikes

What the wine cap gets confused with

Each card says how to tell the two apart.

  1. Compare side by side

  2. Fieldcaps (Agrocybe species)

    Agrocybe species also grow in mulch and gardens but have tan to yellowish caps, a thin ring, and a brown spore print rather than purple-black.

Edibility

What the field guides say

Edible

Field guides list the wine cap as edible, and it is widely grown in home gardens on wood chips and straw. In mulch it can grow alongside other mushrooms, including deadly galerina, which is why field guides stress the purple-black spore print and segmented ring.

This page states what field guides record. It is not advice to eat, taste or handle anything, and a photo cannot settle edibility. If someone has eaten a wild mushroom that may be toxic, call poison control (1-800-222-1222 in the US) right away, before symptoms start: the deadliest species act hours later.

FAQ

Questions about the wine cap

Are wine cap mushrooms edible?

Field guides list them as edible, and they are commonly grown in garden beds. They often share mulch with other mushrooms, so guides describe the purple-black spore print and the segmented ring as the key features.

Why are mushrooms growing in my wood chips?

Fresh wood-chip mulch feeds many wood-decaying fungi. The wine cap is one of the most common large ones, along with Agrocybe species, ink caps and sometimes small brown species such as Galerina.

What does a wine cap mushroom look like?

A large mushroom with a wine-red to reddish-brown cap that fades to tan, gray to purple-black gills, a thick white stem, and a ring split underneath into claw-like segments. Its spore print is dark purple-brown.

Sources

Where these facts come from

  1. Stropharia rugosoannulata

    MushroomExpert.com

  2. Stropharia rugosoannulata

    Fungi Growing on Wood, Gary Emberger (MushroomExpert.com)

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