Is there a way to determine the spore color other than a spore print? Particularly, I'm wanting to do it in the field. With a Q-tip?
If you look carefully around the base of the mushroom without disturbing anything, you can often see spore deposits on whatever substrate is there. This seems to work best with white spores, but it should in principle work with other colors. The older the specimen, the more likely it will have dropped spores. Cortinarii very often show their spore color in a ring around the stem where the remnants of the cortina (ring of tiny fibers) reside.
if there is 1 mushroom growing on top of another mushroom, there is very often a spore deposit on the cap of that lower mushroom.
