Mycena urania, commonly known as the violet bonnet, is a species of mushroom

Mushroom

A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus; hence the word "mushroom" is most often applied to those fungi that...

 in the Mycenaceae

Mycenaceae

The Mycenaceae are a family of fungi in the order Agaricales. According to the Dictionary of the Fungi , the family contains 10 genera and 705 species. This is one of several families that were separated from the Tricholomataceae as a result of phylogenetic analyses...

 family. First named Agaricua uranius in 1818 by Swedish mycologist Elias Magnus Fries

Elias Magnus Fries

-External links:*, Authors of fungal names, Mushroom, the Journal of Wild Mushrooming.*...

, it was assigned its current name in 1872 by the French naturalist Lucien Quélet

Lucien Quélet

thumb|Lucien QuéletLucien Quélet was a French mycologist and naturalist who discovered several species and was the founder of the Société mycologique de France, a society devoted to mycological studies....

.

Description

The cap

Pileus (mycology)

The pileus is the technical name for the cap, or cap-like part, of a basidiocarp or ascocarp that supports a spore-bearing surface, the hymenium. The hymenium may consist of lamellae, tubes, or teeth, on the underside of the pileus...

 is initially conic in shape, and expands to hemispheric in maturity, typically reaching 0.4 to 1 cm (0.15748031496063 to 0.393700787401575 in) in diameter.

Distribution

A rare species, the North American distribution of Mycena urania includes Michigan, North Carolina, and Tennessee. It has also been collected in the Scottish Cairngorms

Cairngorms

The Cairngorms are a mountain range in the eastern Highlands of Scotland closely associated with the mountain of the same name - Cairn Gorm.-Name:...

.