Details about map content are available here Click on the map dots to view record details.
Species Information
Summary: Features include a reddish-brown to yellow-brown cap with a contrasting pale margin, waxy decurrent gills, a dry white stem, and almond odor. Hygrophorus bakerensis is fairly common in the Pacific Northwest. It is possible that this is a synonym of Hygrophorus variicolor (the glutinous stem of the latter may prove not to be significant).
Hesler(1) examined collections from WA, OR, and ID. There are collections from BC at the Pacific Forestry Centre and the University of British Columbia. It occurs in CA (Desjardin). It is included by Bessette(2) for northeastern North America, and Barron says it has been recorded in ON, eastern Canada and the adjacent US.
Cap: 4-15cm across, obtuse to convex becoming broadly convex or flat; cinnamon brown to yellow-brown or tawny, margin usually paler or whitish; slimy or viscid when moist, smooth, (Arora), 4-15cm across, obtuse when young, the margin incurved at first becoming flat or uplifted; disc some shade of yellow-brown, paler toward margin (disc "sudan brown" shading to "tawny-olive" or "amber brown" shading to "cinnamon-buff" toward the whitish margin); glutinous when wet, merely viscid when old, appressed-fibrillose fibers below the gluten, margin cottony, (Hesler)
Flesh: thick; white, (Arora), thick 1cm near stem) tapering evenly to margin, firm; white, unchanging when cut or bruised, (Hesler)
Gills: "usually decurrent but varying to adnate", "soft, somewhat waxy"; white to creamy or pinkish buff; sometimes beaded with droplets in warm weather, (Arora), decurrent or soon becoming so, close to subdistant (56-88 reaching stem), 2-3 tiers of subgills, gills narrow but becoming broad in large caps (0.8-1.2cm broad); creamy white, unchanging; edges even, (Hesler)
Stem: 4-15cm x 0.8-2.5cm, equal or narrowing downward, solid; white to pinkish buff; dry, smooth, sometimes beaded with droplets in warm weather, (Arora), (4)7-14cm x 0.8-2.5cm at top, equal or narrowing downward, solid; white or pale pinkish buff; dry, cottony pruinose at top when young, merely unpolished overall when old, not staining when bruised, often beaded with clear drops in moist weather, (Hesler)
Veil: absent (Arora)
Odor: "sweet but sometimes faint, like almond extract or crushed peach pits", (Arora), "heavy but fragrant and very characteristic, reminding one somewhat of almonds", odor easily missed if one has just a few fruiting bodies, but in large collections very distinct, (Hesler)
Taste: mild (Hesler)
Microscopic spores: spores 7.5-10 x 4.5-6 microns, elliptic, smooth; gill tissue divergent, (Arora), spores 7-9(10) x 4.5-5(6) microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored, 40-54 x 6-8 microns; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia absent; gill tissue divergent; clamp connections present in cap cuticle and gill trama, (Hesler)
Spore deposit: white (Arora)
Habitat / Range
widely scattered to gregarious under conifers, (Arora), scattered to gregarious under conifers, September to December, (Hesler), often on or near rotting conifer wood (Trudell), fall, winter
Similar Species
Hygrophorus agathosmus is similar in odor but the cap is gray not brown (Arora). Hygrophorus variicolor is similar in odor but the lower part of the stem is glutinous, (Hesler). H. variicolor has a tawny cap color as opposed to dark to moderate yellow brown becoming cinnamon brown, (Largent). Hygrophorus pacificus has an aromatic odor but the cap color is different. Hygrophorus odoratus has a similar odor but the cap color is different. Hygrophorus discoideus is similarly colored but has a viscid stem and a mild odor. Rhodocollybia oregonensis has a similar odor but gills are not decurrent and gills are not waxy.
