Summary: {See also Hemimycena Table.} Features include small size, white color, a pruinose cap that is translucent-striate when moist, decurrent, distant, broad gills, a cartilaginous stem, growth on herbaceous and woody debris, elongate, inamyloid spores, and other microscopic characters.
Cap: 0.2-0.5cm across, conic becoming obtusely conic to convex, margin appressed against stem at first; shining white, dead white when old; bald to the naked eye, when young pruinose, "never conspicuously striate even when moist", becoming slightly sulcate when old, (Smith), 0.1-0.5cm across, flat-convex to hemispherical or bell-shaped sometimes becoming irregularly cyathiform [cup-shaped] when old, when young often with an incurved margin; white, becoming chalky white when partially dried; translucent-striate when moist, often slightly radially grooved and rugose [wrinkled], (Redhead(15))
Flesh: thin and fragile; white, (Smith), thin, fleshy; white, (Redhead(15))
Gills: arcuate-decurrent, distant, broad; white, (Smith), "adnate with a decurrent tooth to arcuate adnate, subdistant to distant or moderately spaced, moderately broad, rarely forked", usually with one tier of subgills; white, (Redhead(15))
Stem: 1-2.5cm long, about 0.05cm wide, equal, watery, solid; shining white; pruinose at first, base inserted on substrate or with a few short white hairs, (Smith), 0.8-2.5cm x 0.02-0.1cm, equal, sometimes compressed, cartilaginous; white; appearing bald, "attached by a small radiating mycelial weft", (Redhead)
Odor: mild (Smith), mild to slightly radish-like (Redhead)
Taste: mild (Smith)
Microscopic spores: spores 7-9(11.5) x 2.5-3 microns, almost cylindric, spores smooth, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored (and 2-spored?); pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia abundant, 26-38 x 5-9 microns, usually subfiliform [somewhat thread-like] and with irregular outlines, "the base usually slightly enlarged", pileocystidia similar, caulocystidia similar or longer (up to 50 microns), (Smith), spores 8.5-12 x 2-3 microns, narrowly cylindric to falcate [curved like blade of sickle or scythe], with prominently tapered apiculus, smooth, inamyloid, thin-walled; pleurocystidia rare and scattered usually toward the gill edge and similar to cheilocystidia, (Redhead(15))
Spore deposit: [presumably white]
Notes: Hemimycena albicolor is known from BC (Redhead(15)) and OR (Smith).
EDIBILITY
Habitat and Range
SIMILAR SPECIES
Hemimycena gracilis is similar but H. albicolor has arcuate gills and numerous cystidia on the cap and stem and along the edges of the gills, (Smith). Hemimycena subimmaculata has slightly broader spores, 8-11 x 3.5-4 or 12-14(16) x 4-5(6) microns (Redhead(15)).
Habitat
type gregarious on twigs of Thuja plicata (Western Red-cedar) (Smith), scattered to gregarious on bits of herbaceous and woody debris in stand of Pinus contorta (Lodgepole Pine), Populus tremuloides (Quaking Aspen), Pachistima myrisinites (myrtle boxwood) (Redhead)