Violet webcap: the most violet mushroom in the forest — photos

The violet webcap (*Cortinarius violaceus*) is one of the few mushrooms that are violet all over: cap, gills, stem and even flesh. You can recognise it by its dark violet cap covered in tiny scales, like rough suede, and by its stem with a swelling at the base. The mushroom is rare, our species card marks it as inedible, and the specimen we found we photographed and left where it grew.

This autumn we were lucky: in October 2026, in an open pine forest with birch, we came across several of these mushrooms. Below we show them up close and explain what to look at if this violet marvel turns up for you too.

What the violet webcap looks like

Its features are very distinctive, and the main one is colour. But colour on its own guarantees nothing: there are several violet mushrooms in the forest, so look at the whole set of features.

• The cap is 5–15 cm, hemispherical with an inrolled edge in a young mushroom, then convex and almost flat. Dark violet, inky, darker still in the centre. The surface is dry, matt, covered in tiny scales — this is perhaps the best feature of the species.
• The gills are dark violet, fairly widely spaced, attached to the stem. With age they turn brownish as the rusty-brown spores ripen.
• The stem is thick, the same colour as the cap, covered in fine fibres, swollen towards the base, like a club.
• The flesh is firm and violet-tinged. The smell is faint; some field guides describe it as a light scent of cedarwood.

In the photo at the top of the article is a young violet webcap in moss on rotting wood. It has not opened yet, the little cap is rounded, and its surface is covered all over in tiny bumps and scales, as if someone had gone over it with sandpaper. Both the cap and the stem are the same violet, without any other shade.

The cobweb veil and rusty spore marks

The name “webcap” did not come out of nowhere. In young mushrooms of this genus the gills are covered by a thin, cobweb-like veil called the cortina. When the cap opens, the cortina tears and its threads remain on the stem. Then rusty-brown spores settle on them, and the stem seems to get a rusty band.

In the violet webcap the cortina is short-lived: in mature mushrooms its remains are often barely visible. So rusty marks on the stem are a nice bonus, not a required feature.

And here is a mushroom we ourselves got wrong at first. Violet gills under the cap, lilac flesh at the base of the stem — it would seem to be a violet webcap. But its cap is brown, whereas the violet webcap is violet all over, cap included. A second check showed that this is a different webcap, most likely from the group of *Cortinarius pholideus* or *Cortinarius multiformis*, and its species cannot be named from a photo. Several webcaps have violet gills, so look at the colour of the cap, not just underneath it.

And in this shot the violet webcap is lying on its side, so you can see everything that is usually hidden: dark violet, almost inky gills, a lilac stem with fine fibres and the characteristic club-shaped swelling at the base. In the light the cap looks paler, grey-lilac, but the gills leave no doubt about the colour.

Where and when it grows

The violet webcap is a mycorrhizal fungus, meaning it lives in partnership with tree roots. In Europe its partners are mostly broadleaf trees, above all birch, beech and oak, less often conifers. It is often found in damp birch woods and mossy spots, and its fruiting bodies frequently turn up near rotting wood. Sources disagree about soil: in some countries it is described on acidic soils, in Britain mostly in beech woods on chalk and limestone, so it seems acidity is not decisive for it. It grows singly or in small groups.

The main season is August–October, although in some countries it is found from July to November. Our find was an October one: the mushrooms stood in green moss on old rotten wood, among fallen birch leaves.

The main thing to know about it: it is not common. In many forests you may not meet it for years, so every find is a real event.

Is it in the Red Book of Ukraine?

People often write that the violet webcap is “in the Red Book”. We checked, and it is not so. The species is not in the Red Book of Ukraine (2009 edition). Nor is it among the twenty fungus species added to the list in 2021. The white webcap (*Leucocortinarius bulbiger*), on the other hand, is in the Red Book of Ukraine, and on the book's website it even sits in the webcap family section, although it is not a true webcap. Perhaps that is where some of the confusion comes from.

That does not cancel the mushroom's rarity, though. In Poland the violet webcap is on the national red list as a vulnerable species (category V), although it is not protected by law there. In Slovakia it is on the list of protected species, and in a number of Western European countries, including Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, it is on red lists. In Britain and Ireland it is very rare. In Ukraine, too, it is found only rarely.

So our rule is the same as for Red Book mushrooms: photograph it, admire it and leave it. A long-term experiment in Switzerland showed that picking mushrooms as such does not reduce future harvests, because the mycelium stays in the soil. But a mushroom that is allowed to mature and shed its spores gives the species a chance to settle in new places, and for a rare species that matters. We wrote in more detail about what can and cannot be picked in the article mushroom ethics and the law.

Is the violet webcap edible?

Our species card marks the violet webcap as inedible, and we do not consider it for the basket. Field guides disagree here: some consider the mushroom edible but mediocre, and some European ones even good, others inedible; in Poland it is classed as inedible. It is also described as turning bitter after cooking.

But even setting taste aside, there are two strong reasons not to pick it:

• The webcap genus is dangerous. It includes deadly poisonous species, such as the fool's webcap. Their toxin, orellanine, damages the kidneys and acts with a delay: kidney failure develops over several days, sometimes up to two weeks. Orellanine has been found mainly in rusty and orange webcaps, not in violet ones, so the danger is not in the violet webcap itself. It lies in the fact that telling webcaps apart to species level is hard even for experienced foragers, especially with old, faded specimens.
• It is rare. A mushroom cut before it matures will no longer shed its spores, and for a rare species every fruiting body counts.

So for ourselves we have closed the question of “how to cook it”. But if you have eaten an unfamiliar webcap and feel unwell, do not wait: we have collected the symptoms and first aid in the article mushroom poisoning.

What it can be confused with

There are several violet mushrooms in European forests, and the most reliable way to tell them apart is the colour of the spore print. You do not need to pick the webcap for this: in mature mushrooms the rusty spores are often visible right on the remains of the cortina on the stem.

• Wood blewit (*Lepista nuda*). The cap is smooth, without scales, slightly slimy in wet weather. There is no cobweb veil, the gills are crowded, and the smell is pleasant, sweetish, perfumed or aniseed, though it can also be faint. The spore print is pale pink. We cover it in detail in the article wood blewit.
• Amethyst deceiver (*Laccaria amethystina*). Smaller and more delicate: the cap is 2–7 cm, the stem thin, up to 1 cm, fibrous. The gills are widely spaced, thick, and with age look as if dusted with flour. The spore print is white.
• Goatcheese webcap (*Cortinarius camphoratus*). The cap has no scales, it is finely fibrous, pale lilac, turning ochre in the centre with age. It is given away by its sharp, unpleasant smell, reminiscent of camphor or rotting potatoes.
• Gassy webcap (*Cortinarius traganus*). Lilac on the outside, but the flesh inside is rusty ochre, and the smell is strong: fruity, pear-like in young mushrooms, unpleasant in older ones. It grows mostly with conifers.

In short: tiny scales on a dark cap, a club-shaped stem and a rusty-brown spore print mean violet webcap. A smooth cap and a pink print mean wood blewit; a small, delicate mushroom with a white print is a deceiver (*Laccaria*).