Crimson Waxcap - Hygrocybe punicea

A large waxcap, 3 - 10cm,  with blood-red or dark-red caps, usually emerging bluntly conical and then flattening or becoming umbonate.  The young caps are sometimes pruinose i.e. with a whitish bloom.   The mature caps fade from the centre outwards to a straw or yellowish colour, often leaving a red edge to the cap.   The caps are greasy/a bit slimy.  Gills are adnexed or free; yellow but reddening as the caps ages.  The stipe is red at the apex, becoming yellow and with a white base, and is dry and fibrillose. 

Scarlet Waxcap (Hygrocybe coccinea) and Splendid Waxcap (Hygrocybe splendidissima). Other red waxcaps are usually a brighter red and without the white base to the stipe.  

Care is needed to separate this from other red waxcaps - check the gill shape and stipe from a specimen.

Can be difficult to verify from photos; note texture of cap and stipe (dry/greasy/sticky? and smooth/fibrillose?).  It will help to have a photos of gills, best seen in a specimen cut through the cap and stipe, and a photo of the stipe base

mown or close-cropped grasslands with low fertility, including churchyards