Please glow

Another day, another fungus. This one growing a good foot above head height, so difficult to examine in situ.

The fruiting bodies are fairly small, not more than 2 cm across and pale brown coloured, like a milky tea. They have these attractive gills which stop neatly at the stem.

On first impressions, the species it looks most like in Roger Phillips' Mushrooms is Bitter Oysterling (Panellus stipticus).

The books don't agree on whether P. stipticus tastes of anything. Roger Phillips' Mushrooms says, "taste bitter" whereas Michael Jordan's Fungi says, "taste not distinctive". I tasted a tiny bit. It didn't taste very distinctive to me.

Both books say P. stipticus has a white spore print. So does mine. Ta daa!

I had a go at examining the spores under the microscope, but even at highest magnification they just look small. And white. They're supposed to be elliptical - do these look elliptical to you?

I got incredibly excited when I googled "Panellus stipticus" and found out IT GLOWS IN THE DARK!? So I sat in a darkened room with my specimen for ten minutes when I got in from work: It didn't glow. (But then the thing I read says it's only individuals from eastern North America that glow. Which I think is weird.)

In conclusion, reckon this might be Bitter Oysterling (Panellus stipticus) but I'm not sure. I'll believe it when I see it glow.

For the record
Date: 05/01/16
Location: Woods Mill nature reserve
Grid reference: TQ2113
Entered into FRDBI: 13/02/2017