Summary:
Features include 1) a depressed, hygrophanous, dark brown to dark gray-brown, non-viscid cap, 2) decurrent, close, pallid gills that become grayish or grayish brown, 3) a stem colored as the cap or paler, 4) a mild odor and taste, 5) a white spore deposit, and 6) elliptic, smooth, amyloid spores.

Cap:
2.5-8cm across, centrally depressed with inrolled margin becoming funnel-shaped when old; dark brown to dark gray-brown, fading when old to grayish or paler brown; smooth not viscid, (Arora), 1.5-7cm across, convex at first with inrolled margin, soon expanding to flat and depressed, finally cyathiform [cup-shaped] to subinfundibuliform [somewhat funnel-shaped]; hygrophanous, dark brown ("mummy brown", "bister", "Prout's brown", "snuff brown"), fading paler and more grayish ("wood brown", "drab", "buffy brown"); bald when moist, somewhat radiate-fibrillose or hoary when fading, "margin often translucent-striate when moist", at times sulcate [grooved], (Bigelow)

Flesh:
thin; pallid, (Arora), thin; colored as cap, (Bigelow)

Gills:
"at first adnate but soon deeply decurrent", close; pallid becoming grayish or grayish brown, (Arora), short-decurrent to long-decurrent, usually forming a collar on stem, close to subdistant, narrow to moderately broad, up to 0.6cm broad, occasionally forking, usually interveined and the faces often veined; watery brownish (near "clay color", "tawny olive"), fading to grayish brown or pale brownish, finally pale sordid buff, (Bigelow)

Stem:
5-12cm x 0.4-1cm, equal or wider in lower part, often rather long; cap-colored or paler; "fibrillose, often with whitish down at base", (Arora), 2.5-7cm x 0.4-0.9cm, off-center at times, equal or somewhat widened in lower part, usually curved, stuffed then hollow, finally compressed (flattened) and fluted; "watery brown, fading to pale brownish or sordid buff, sometimes with a vinaceous tint, brownish fibrillose streaked over a pallid ground when faded"; bald when moist, base sometimes with white rhizomorphs, (Bigelow)

Odor:
mild (Arora), not distinctive (Bigelow)

Taste:
not distinctive (Bigelow)

Microscopic spores:
spores 7-11 x 5-6 microns, elliptic, smooth, amyloid, (Arora), spores (6.5)7.5-10.5(13) x (4)5-6.5(7.5) microns, elliptic or broadly elliptic, smooth, inamyloid to very weakly amyloid (blackish to grayish in Melzer''s reagent); basidia usually 4-spored, occasionally 1-spored or 2-spored, 20-46 x 8-10(13) microns; [pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia presumably absent]; clamp connections absent, (Bigelow)

Spore deposit:
white (Arora), usually white, yellowish in one collection, (Bigelow)

Notes:
Collections were examined from WA, OR, ID, NS, ON, PE, QC, MA, ME, MI, NC, NY, OH, TN, VT, and Sweden, (Bigelow(5)). It has been reported from BC according to Redhead(5), and appears on BC foray lists. It has been found in CA (Desjardin(6)). Breitenbach(3) gave the distribution as North America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa.

EDIBILITY

not recommended because of similar species of unknown edibility, (Arora)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Cantharellula cyathiformis (Bull.) Singer
Clitocybe cyathiformis (Bull.) P. Kumm.
Clitocybe poculum (Peck) Sacc.
Omphalia cyathiformis (Bull.) Kuehner & Romagn.