Summary:
Section Hispidoderma. Features include 1) a velvety to granulose cap with a dingy brownish disc and a bright yellowish margin, 2) free, close gills, 3) a whitish or pinkish stem that usually becomes yellowish when old, 4) a pinkish spore deposit, 5) growth on dead hardwood, and 6) microscopic characters including large pileocystidia. Pluteus flavofuligineus is recognized among Pluteus species by its color and velvety cap texture. |According to Desjardin(6), recent molecular data indicate that this name is a synonym of P. leoninus. But D. Miller (pers. comm.) later wrote, "A sequence from Idaho matches close enough with European sequences that Justo called it the same species. Sequences from Salem, Oregon and the Washington/Idaho border are a little further away and may or may not represent the real species or a sister species".

Cap:
2-8cm across, bell-shaped then flattened; "deep blackish yellow to yellow-green, then paler", more yellow-ocher as it expands; "with granular or velvety surface", (Phillips), conic at first, becoming flat, umbonate; yellow brown; velvety, (Barron), (2.5)3-7cm across, "when young ovoid to convex, expanding to broadly umbonate or broadly convex"; nearly black or with an olive cast, the margin yellowish, gradually changing to some shade of yellow, pale lemon yellow to ocher-yellow on margin and disc tinged umber or smoky (when young the entire cap very dark sordid brown with an olivaceous cast); "moist but appearing more or less granulose to furfuraceous", disc even to wrinkled or rugulose [finely wrinkled], "margin even or only indistinctly striate", (Smith)

Flesh:
yellowish (Phillips), thin; pallid, in stem pallid to pinkish, (Smith)

Gills:
[free], crowded, broad; pallid then pink, (Phillips); free, rounded next to stem, close, 0.3-0.5cm broad; "pallid yellowish buff to almost white but soon tinged pink from the spores"; edges even or slightly fimbriate [fringed], (Smith)

Stem:
4-10cm x 0.4-0.8cm, equal, pinkish, then yellow when old, (Phillips), 4-8cm x 0.4-0.6cm at top; equal or very slightly and evenly widened downward, solid; at first pinkish but gradually becoming yellowish and finally more or less colored as cap margin (stem color quite variable: in one collection only a slight tinge of yellow toward the base and the old fruitbodies with a strong pinkish tint throughout, in another the yellow color dominant, in other collections white becoming pinkish); bald, (Smith)

Veil:
[none]

Odor:
not distinctive (Phillips), none (Smith)

Taste:
not distinctive (Phillips, Smith)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-7 x 4.5-5.5 microns, oval, smooth; pleurocystidia abundant, with acute point, (Phillips); spores 6-7 x 5-6 microns, smooth, nearly round; basidia 4-spored, 22-24 x 7-8 microns, "projecting one half their length when sporulating"; pleurocystidia fairly abundant, 58-86 x 12-23 microns, "broadly fusoid-ventricose with obtuse apices", cheilocystidia similar but smaller; subhymenium cellular, the cells 15 microns in diameter; gill trama of large convergent hyphae; cap trama of interwoven hyphae; pileocystidia large, 100-200 x 20-30 microns, forming a surface covering, fusoid-pointed, non-septate, with yellow to smoky yellow contents, (Smith)

Spore deposit:
pink (Phillips), flesh-color (Smith)

Notes:
The holotype is from NY. Pluteus flavofuligineus has been reported from WA (M. Beug, pers. comm.), and is indicated in Smith(15) for OR, MI, NY, and TN. There are collections for BC at the University of British Columbia.

EDIBILITY

edible (Phillips), unknown (Smith)