Meadow waxcapCuphophyllus pratensis

The meadow waxcap (Cuphophyllus pratensis, often still listed as Hygrocybe pratensis) is a sturdy, orange-buff waxcap of old, short grassland. It has a dry apricot to pale orange cap and, underneath, thick, widely spaced, waxy gills that run well down a paler stem. It's edible and often rated among the best waxcaps to eat, though opinions vary, but its grasslands are in decline, so most mycologists would rather you photographed it than picked it.

How do you identify a meadow waxcap? Look underneath first. The gills are thick, broad and widely spaced, feel slightly waxy and run down the stem, often by more than a centimetre. The cap is 2 to 8 cm across, up to 10 to 12 cm in large specimens, dry and matt, convex at first and later flattened, often with a broad bump. The stem is always paler than the cap and tapers towards the base. The spore print is white and the smell isn't distinctive. It grows singly, in groups, in lines and sometimes in large rings.

Where does it grow? In old, unimproved grassland that hasn't been ploughed or fertilised for years: sheep pasture, upland grassland, old lawns, churchyards and roadside verges, and occasionally in woodland clearings. It's widespread in old grassland, especially in upland areas on acid soil. Look for it from late summer to early winter, with most finds in mid to late autumn. Old waxcap grasslands are precious, and fertiliser, lime and ploughing all wipe them out. Plantlife asks people to keep picking to a minimum.

Is the meadow waxcap edible? Yes. It can be fried in its own juices without any fat, and it shouldn't be eaten raw. We know of no reported poisonings from it, but that doesn't make every waxcap safe: the blackening waxcap is listed as poisonous. If you do pick, take only a few from a large, thriving group.

What can you mistake it for? Its closest lookalike is the oak woodwax (Hygrophorus nemoreus), which is also orange but grows under oaks in woodland, smells mealy, and has a finely fibrous cap and a stem the same colour as the cap. Both are edible. The real danger is the rare white form of the meadow waxcap. Small white Clitocybe species with flat or slightly sunken caps, the ivory funnel and fool's funnel, grow on the same lawns and pastures and contain muscarine. Their gills are thin and crowded, not thick and widely spaced, and a white spore print and decurrent gills don't rule them out. So don't eat a white "waxcap" from grass unless you're completely sure. The false chanterelle has thin, crowded, forked gills and grows in conifer woods and on heaths, while the chanterelle has blunt ridges instead of gills and grows under trees.

Waxcaps were long thought to feed on dead plant material, but research at Sourhope in Scotland suggests otherwise. A single meadow waxcap fruit body that came up beside grass fed with labelled carbon dioxide picked up the label within two weeks, so these fungi probably draw on living plants or mosses. On that site, meadow waxcaps made up nearly two thirds of around four thousand waxcap fruit bodies recorded.