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Amethyst ChanterelleCantharellus amethysteus
Kingdom: Fungi
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| Common name | Amethyst Chanterelle |
| Scientific name | Cantharellus amethysteus |
| AKA | Amethyst-Scaled Chanterelle, Frosted Chanterelle |
| Season (UK) | Summer to early winter (usually from July to December) |
| Habitat | Deciduous woodland. Most often associated with oak, but occasionally also beech and conifer |
| Cap diameter | 3m to 10cm |
| Spore print | White to pale yellow (sometimes with a faint pink tinge) |
| Edibility | Edible. Comparable to common chanterelle (only pick if it’s abundant) |
| Rarity | Rare to occasional. Possibly under-recorded due to ease of confusion with the classic chantarelle) |
The Cantharellus genus contains some of the most sought-after edible fungi in the world — the chanterelles. The Amethyst Chanterelle is one of the less-celebrated members of the family (mostly because field guides have historically ignored it, not because it's done anything wrong, though it might have, we can’t say for sure), and is thought to be considerably more widespread than records suggest. Foragers familiar with the common chanterelle have almost certainly walked past one without knowing it.
Overview
We think we may have seen this one. There's a stretch a little place called Eastham Country Park on the the Wirral which is really quite lovely, despite being in Eastham (we jest) that we've visited a few times in late summer, and on at least one occasion there were what appeared to be chanterelles, but which looked a bit off - less gold and more ochre-with-an-attitude-problem. We poked at them with a stick and they seemed to be almost certainly chanterelles but we would never (as things stand) eat anything we found because we wouldn’t do well in jail. Whether they were amethysteus or plain old cibarius is a question we will never be able to answer with confidence. Such is life.
Cantharellus amethysteus is, however, by most accounts, a genuinely rare to occasional find in the UK, though Wild Food UK and several field naturalists suspect it's considerably more common than records indicate, simply because it's so easily misidentified as a common chanterelle (cibariusly underreported, one might say, if one wanted to illicit groans from all around them).
The defining feature of this mushroom is a coating of tiny purplish-amethyst scales on a yellow cap which, in fresh, well-lit specimens, produces something genuinely striking (being both gold and violet at once). In older or drier specimens, the purple fades, and you're left with something that looks entirely like its more famous relative. It looks, to be clear, like it should be a goblin hat. A small goblin, we’ll admit, but if you can look at the picture above and not see a hat for a goblin, let us know.
Edible, tasty, and (unlike one of the species we wrote about recently) not going to give you haemolysis, which is nice. A refreshing entry all round.
Identification
The cap is where the ID action is. Background colour runs from pale yellow to deep egg-yolk gold (standard chanterelle territory), but this is overlaid with a coating of tiny, purplish-amethyst scales (denser at the centre, sometimes patchy or extending towards the margin), which are variably distributed enough that some specimens look intensely purple-dusted while others have barely a hint of violet. The scales are the diagnostic feature, however, everything else is essentially common chanterelle. They tend to persist longest at the centre of mature caps and fade first at the edges, which means a quick check of the central cap surface is your most reliable field test when the colouration is subtle.
The underside is not gills, and this is important enough to fix in the memory if you're new to the chanterelle family. What you're looking at is a series of thick, forking, blunt-edged ridges (sometimes called false gills or veins) that run partway down the stem. Pale yellow, decurrent, forking repeatedly towards the cap margin.
The stem is solid, tapers downwards, pale yellow to cream, and is sometimes slightly flattened or twisted. Flesh is white, firm, and turns yellow with age. Smells faintly of apricots according to experts, and that specific fruity scent is one of the chanterelle family's most reliable calling cards and worth learning, if only so you can describe it confidently to people who haven't encountered it yet (possibly while they disguise a yawn).
The stem and flesh of the amethyst chanterelle bruise brown when cut or handled, which distinguishes it from the common chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius), which doesn't. The spore print is white to pale yellow, sometimes with a very faint pink tinge, and we’d always recommend taking a print if you have any doubt, though for the chanterelle family generally the combination of ridges-not-gills, fruity smell, and habitat is usually sufficient for confident ID.
Cap scales, bruising stem, false gills, apricot smell. That's the confirmation.
Lookalikes & ‘Mix-Up’ Species
A note on Google Lens: If you photograph an Amethyst Chanterelle and run it through Google Lens or a similar image-recognition tool, there's a reasonable chance it will suggest the Woolly Chanterelle (Turbinellus floccosus) as a match. This vase-shaped, scaly, orange fungus that can cause gastrointestinal symptoms does not actually grow in the UK. The visual similarity is superficial (both have scales, both are roughly chanterelle-adjacent in shape), but they are not the same thing - if you're in British woodland beside an oak tree, you're not looking at Turbinellus floccosus. Trust the habitat (and your knowledge of the country you’re in).
The good news is that the genuinely dangerous confusion species are few, and the Amethyst Chanterelle specifically is harder to confuse with something toxic than most. The main lookalikes are all either edible or, at worst, mildly unpleasant rather than medically serious.
Common Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) - the obvious one, and the most likely mix-up. Identical in almost every respect except the absence of amethyst scales and the non-bruising stem. Eating it by mistake is not a problem (every time anyone has foraged chanterelles they might have been eating amethysteus without knowing). Worth knowing the difference for recording purposes, if nothing else.
False Chanterelle (Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca) - more orange than yellow, with true gills rather than forking ridges, and a tendency to grow in denser clusters on or near rotting wood. Mildly toxic to some people; unpleasant to pretty much everyone. The gills are the tell: sharp, crowded, blade-like. Nothing like the blunt, forking veins of a chanterelle. Should be a sure giveaway.
Trumpet Chanterelle/Winter Chanterelle (Cantharellus tubaeformis) - smaller, with a hollow stem, a grey-brown cap, and a distinctly more autumnal personality. Also edible, also good. Yellow stem is the quickest distinguisher. Not really a lookalike so much as a family member that visits later in the season. Mostly welcome, but you’d rather they were someone else.
Pale Chanterelle (Cantharellus ferruginascens) - this is technically a possible mix-up, but as it’s one of the rarest chanterelles in the UK, if you think you've found one, you probably haven't, but it would be nice if you had. It’s similar to the amethyst chanterelle but lacks the purple scales entirely.
Edibility
The Amethyst Chanterelle is considered equivalent to the common chanterelle in culinary terms, with the same mild, earthy flavour, same faint fruity sweetness, same apricot-ish aroma that rises from the pan when you add butter. First Nature describes it as identical to cibarius for cooking purposes, and Wild Food UK rates it as just as tasty and sought-after. If you find one (or a patch, which is more likely given they tend to grow in groups), treat it exactly as you'd treat a common chanterelle: butter, gentle heat, something to put it on.
The purple scales do not, unfortunately, survive cooking in the way the amethyst deceiver's colour does. They fade, and you end up with a golden chanterelle and a memory of a mushroom that was briefly more interesting. This is not a reason not to eat them, but it is a minor disappointment worth acknowledging before you start planning plate aesthetics.
Still, better than a beige risotto.
The only genuine caveat is rarity. Wild Food UK is clear: pick only if abundant. The amethyst chanterelle is rare enough in the UK that turning a find into a meal feels, to some foragers, like a waste of a record. Take a few, photograph the rest, note the location, come back next year. That's the responsible version, but we're not the mushroom police (yet).
Naming history
The Amethyst Chanterelle was first formally described by Lucien Quélet — a French mycologist responsible for a significant chunk of late 19th century European fungal taxonomy, and a man who apparently had a type when it came to naming things (he also described the amethyst deceiver's genus, so apparently he liked the colour purple, great film). Quélet initially treated it as a variety of the common chanterelle, calling it Cantharellus cibarius var. amethysteus. Variety. As in: basically a chanterelle, but with a hat.
In 1887, Italian mycologist Pier Andrea Saccardo, a man of extraordinary productivity (but anyone who has watched the slow development of this site will know that we have a pretty low threshold when it comes to productivity), whose Sylloge Fungorum remains one of the most ambitious cataloguing projects in the history of mycology, elevated it to species status as Cantharellus amethysteus. 31 volumes of mushrooms published between 1882 and 1931, covering tens of thousands of species. Boy did not take days off, apparently.
That binomial (Cantharellus amethysteus, sorry, we took a detour) has stood ever since, although it picked up a brief stint as Craterellus amethysteus when Quélet himself reclassified it in 1888, apparently reconsidering his own previous work. These things happen. We reconsider our choices all the time. ‘Girl same’ gif?
The genus name Cantharellus comes from the Latin cantharus, which itself came from the Greek kantharos meaning ‘drinking vessel’, typically with handles, the kind an ancient Greek would use at a symposium. The fungus is named after a cup, in short, which, given the funnel shape, is actually one of the more defensible pieces of mycological nomenclature we've encountered. They probably didn’t know the Greek for ‘goblin hat’.
The species epithet amethysteus means, predictably, 'amethyst-coloured', and refers to the purplish scales on the cap. The amethyst gemstone takes its name from the Greek amethystos, 'not drunk', as the stone was believed to prevent intoxication. Whether eating an Amethyst Chanterelle has a similar effect is not documented in the literature. It probably doesn't, and we’re too old to test it.
Ecology
The Amethyst Chanterelle is ectomycorrhizal, meaning it forms symbiotic partnerships with tree roots, exchanging minerals for sugars in the standard arrangement that underlies most of the interesting fungal finds in British woodlands. It's most strongly associated with oak (Quercus robur and Q. petraea) and is occasionally found under beech and, more rarely, conifers. The oak association places it in classic summer-to-autumn deciduous woodland habitat, often in the same spots that produce common chanterelles (mossy ground, dappled light, the kind of place that reliably delivers several species at once if the timing is right).
There's a reasonable chance that the Amethyst Chanterelle's apparent rarity in the UK is, at least partly, a recording artefact. It's not well described in most field guides (some don't include it at all), it closely resembles the common chanterelle, and its diagnostic feature (the purple scales) fades with age and in dry weather. A forager finding a patch of slightly unusual-looking chanterelles in a good oak wood in August is, statistically, probably not stopping to consider whether they might be a separate species. They're probably just eating them. There's an argument that the NBN Atlas (the UK's largest repository of publicly available biodiversity data) distribution map for amethysteus reflects the distribution of people who know it exists, rather than the distribution of the mushroom itself.
Chanterelles generally are notably resistant to insect infestation compared to other woodland fungi (a Finnish study found fewer than one percent colonised by insects, compared to forty to eighty percent in other fungal taxa). Whether this applies equally to amethysteus isn't specifically studied, but given the close relationship to cibarius it seems reasonable to assume grubs will feel the same way about both. Small mercies etc.
Where to Find It in the UK
We should say upfront: finding the Amethyst Chanterelle specifically, rather than a chanterelle that might be amethysteus, is harder than it sounds. The best approach is to find a reliable chanterelle spot first (mature oak or beech woodland with good moss cover and decent drainage) and then look more carefully than you normally would. That dusty, slightly muted specimen at the edge of the patch. The one that's gold but not quite gold. That's the one worth crouching down to examine.
In England, the same spots that produce good common chanterelle hauls are your best starting points: the oak woods of the New Forest, Epping Forest, the Chilterns, and the Wye Valley all have documented amethysteus records, though the distribution is patchy and finds are typically singles or small groups rather than the large troops you might encounter with cibarius. Surrey and Kent have some good oak woodland that's worth checking. The Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire is worth an autumn visit for chanterelles in general.
Wales and Scotland follow the common chanterelle distribution closely, with good mycorrhizal oak woodland producing the best results. In Scotland particularly, the birch and Scots pine woodland of the Highlands is classic chanterelle territory, and amethysteus has been recorded in similar habitats across northern Europe, so it's almost certainly under-recorded there too.
The season for this mushroom runs July to December, with peak fruiting in August and September. Look a few days after rain, in damp moss, low to the ground at the base of mature oaks. Don't just look for gold, look for gold with something slightly unusual about it.
Worth knowing
The Cantharellus genus contains over 500 scientific names that have been applied to it across its taxonomic history, and Index Fungorum lists them all, should you have a spare afternoon. The number of currently valid species is less than 100, however, which should give you an insight into the general prevalence of mycological second-guessing.
Chanterelles in general have antibacterial, antiviral, and antioxidant properties, and contain compounds reported to assist with liver function, and cholesterol reduction. Whether any of this applies meaningfully to normal culinary quantities is a question the literature handles with appropriate vagueness. They taste good, though, that's confirmed.
The Woolly Chanterelle (Turbinellus floccosus), the species Google Lens may try to redirect you towards, is more closely related to stinkhorns than true chanterelles, which is a sentence that will either delight or concern you depending on your prior feelings about stinkhorns. It does not grow in the UK. Its Nepalese name, diyo chyau, means 'oil lamp mushroom', because the locals thought it looked like a local oil lamp. The locals were not wrong. This is completely irrelevant to British foraging, but we liked it too much to leave it out.
The Amethyst Chanterelle is, depending on conditions and the specimen, either genuinely beautiful or oddly lumpy and goblin-hatty. Both versions are edible. Both versions are worth finding. We'd like to find one definitively, rather than probably, at some point.
Sources: Wild Food UK, The Wildlife Trusts, Wikipedia (Cantharellus amethysteus), First Nature, Discover the Wild, Galloway Wild Foods, NBN Atlas
This article is for informational purposes only. Never consume any wild mushroom without a confirmed identification from a qualified expert. Mushroom Future cannot be held responsible for foraging decisions made on the basis of this or any other written guide. Including the bit about the Wirral (plus, we quite like Eastham, really).