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Species Information
Summary: Features include 1) a hygrophanous, dingy brown, viscid, peelable, striate cap, 2) gills that are pallid then brown with white edges, 3) a cap-colored stem with a more deeply colored base, a ring zone and fibrillose patches, 4) growth on twigs and other wood debris, or on grass stems or rotten dung, 5) a grayish chocolate brown spore deposit, and 6) microscopic characters.
There are collections from BC and WA at the University of British Columbia and a collection from OR at Oregon State University. Collections were examined from WA, MA, MI, TN, Greenland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, and USSR, (Guzman). It is also found in Britain/Ireland (Buczacki).
Gills: adnate; clay to dull rust, with whitish edges, (Stamets), "broadly adnate to sinuate or short subdecurrent"; "reddish brown or brownish to grayish brown or violet brown", with whitish edges; edge fimbriate [fringed] and subfloccose [somewhat floccose], (Guzman)
Stem: 0.5-1.2cm x 0.1-0.4cm, colored as cap, more dark reddish-brown near base and lighter above an annular zone; adorned with distinct fibrillose patches, (Stamets), 1.4-3(3.5)cm x 0.1-0.15(0.2)cm, equal, swollen at base, flexuous [wavy], hollow; colored as cap or paler at top, much deeper colored at base; dry, "subfloccose, mottled or banded with white fibrillose squamules from veil", (Guzman)
Veil: partial veil cortinate, (Stamets), well developed as cortinate, soon evanescent and leaving on young cap margin silky, appressed, white fibrils that often agglutinate on the stem to form a floccose subannulus usually obliterated when mature, (Guzman)
Odor: unremarkable (Guzman)
Taste: unremarkable (Guzman)
Microscopic spores: spores 6-8 x 3.5-5 micron, subelliptic [somewhat elliptic], thin-walled; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia 25-45 microns long, lageniform to sublageniform, (Stamets), spores (5)5.5-6.6(7.7) x (4)4.8-5.4 x 3.3-4.8 microns, subrhomboid in face view, subelliptic in side view, pale brownish yellow, more or less thick-walled (0.5 microns), broad flat germ pore, some irregular spores observed (heart-shaped, or with 2 pores); basidia 4-spored, 18-20 x 5-6 microns, subventricose, colorless; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia abundant, forming a sterile band, 25-45 x 3-6 microns, colorless, sublageniform, with long filiform apex or neck 1.6-2.5 microns in diameter; clamp connections present, (Guzman)
Spore deposit: grayish chocolate brown or bister-sepia (Guzman), cigar brown (Stamets), mid-brown, not purplish, (Buczacki)
Habitat / Range
on twigs and other wood debris in fall, not on grass [but see Guzman below], (Stamets), single or gregarious "on grass stems or rhizomes, rotten twigs, or logs, or other herbaceous debris, or on sawdust, or on old or rotten dung, in grasslands" or, more often, in open hardwood forests, rarely in coniferous forests or subalpine zones, also rare in arctic zones; fruiting in summer, (Guzman), fall (Buczacki)
Similar Species
Deconica inquilina differs by growing attached to rotting grass (Stamets), but according to Guzman(1) the habitat seems to be the same while D. inquilina has larger spores, (6.6)7.7-8.8(10) x 4.5-5.5(6.6) x 3.8-4.4 microns, and smaller cheilocystidia (15)18-38 x 5-8 microns. Psilocybe apelliculosa has different spores (Guzman). Deconica phyllogena has rhomboid spores. D. crobula also shares similarities with P. laticystis, P. subborealis, P. atrobrunnea, and P. washingtonensis, (Stamets). See also SIMILAR section of Deconica montana.
