ISSN (print) 0093-4666 © 2013. Mycotaxon, Ltd. ISSN (online) 2154-8889 MYCOTAXON http://dx.doi.org/10.5248/123.213 Volume 123, pp. 213–220 January–March 2013 A new species of Stropharia from Western Ghats, India Gunasekaran Senthilarasu* 1 & Sanjay K Singh 2 National Facility for Culture Collection of Fungi, MACS’ Agharkar Research Institute, G. G. Agarkar Road, Pune–411 004, India Correspondence to *: 1 senthilarasug@rediffmail.com & 2 singhsksingh@gmail.com Abstract—Stropharia rubrobrunnea, characterized by its caespitose habit, smooth grayish red or reddish to violet brown hygrophanous pileus, annular stipe, and dimorphic cheilocystidia, is described and illustrated as a new species. It is distinguished from S. rugosoannulata by its stipe color and basidiospore size. Key words—Agaricales, Basidiomycota, dark-spored agarics, diversity, taxonomy Introduction e genus Stropharia (Fr.) Quél. (Strophariaceae Singer & A.H. Sm.) is poorly known from India, where only ten species have been recorded (Manjula 1983; Natarajan et al. 2005; Farook et al. 2013; Kumaresan & Senthilarasu, unpublished check list). Of these, S. bicolor Pegler, S. rugosoannulata Murrill (Manimohan et al. 2007), and S. aurantiaca (Cooke) M. Imai (Natarajan & Raman 1983) were recently recorded from southern India. Two excluded species are S. pokhraensis Dhanch. & Bakhukh. (Dhancholia & Bakhukhandi 1992), poorly known, and S. semiglobata (Batsch) Quél. (Natarajan & Raman 1983; Vrinda & Pradeep 2011; Mohanan 2011), which lacks true acanthocytes (Moncalvo et al. 2002) and has been transferred to Protostropharia semiglobata (Batsch) Redhead et al. e other poorly known species earlier recorded from India are Stropharia aureofulva (Berk.) Sacc. (as Agaricus aureofulvus), S. gollanii Henn., S. mephistopheles (Cooke) Sacc. (no material or illustration at Kew), S. psathyroides Henn., and S. pygmaea Henn. (Berkeley 1850, Hennings 1900). In the present paper, a new species collected from Western Ghats, Stropharia rubrobrunnea, is described, illustrated, and compared with closely related species. Materials & methods in handmade sections were made from dried specimens rehydrated with alcohol were mounted in 10% KOH and stained in 3% phloxine or cotton blue prior