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Species Information
Summary: Features include 1) a conic to umbonate, moist to lubricous, striate cap that is brown on the disc and orange-brown to yellowish toward the margin, 2) close gills that are pallid olivaceous gray to honey-colored or cinnamon, 3) a horny stem that is reddish brown to black at the base and paler toward the top, 4) a bitter taste, 5) growth on rotting plant remains or woody debris, 6) a milky-coffee to earthy brown spore deposit, and 7) microscopic characters. It is uncommon.
Collections examined from BC, WA, OR, ID, NL, ON, MI, and the United Kingdom (Scotland), (Redhead(14)).
Cap: 0.4-2.5cm across, conic with incurved margin at first, becoming bell-shaped to convex with prominent, small, blunt umbo; brown on disc, ("Sudan brown" or rich 'sienna'), orange-brown to yellowish toward margin ("raw sienna" or 'fulvous' to 'luteous'), fading to "pale orange-yellow"; moist to lubricous, translucent-striate at margin when moist, silky when faded
Flesh: thin; colored as cap
Gills: narrowly adnate to narrowly adnexed, often seceding, close, 1-3 tiers of subgills, ventricose [broader in middle]; pallid olivaceous gray or "amber" to ''honey'', becoming "old gold" or ''cinnamon''; edges entire to eroded
Stem: 1.5-4.5cm x 0.09-2cm, (photographs do not show a thick stem, so this should probably be 0.2cm), horny, often tapered toward base and often curved; reddish brown to black at base (''bay'' to ''dark brick'' or black) and paler toward top ("Sudan brown" or ''fulvous'' to ''ochreous'' or ''luteous''); bald, dull or with a luster, basal weft of ''ochreous'' mycelium
Odor: not distinctive
Taste: slightly to intensely bitter
Microscopic spores: spores 4.9-6.0(6.4) x 3-3.8(4.5) microns, elliptic to vaguely kidney-shaped, smooth, nearly colorless to faintly yellowish in KOH, not reacting in Melzer''s reagent, cyanophilic, often with 1 or 2 droplets, lacking germ pore, walls refractive, only slightly thickened; basidia 4-spored, 15.5-21 x 4.8-5.2 microns, clavate, clamped, colorless to faintly yellowish; pleurocystidia lacking or present only near the gill edge and similar to cheilocystidia, cheilocystidia abundant, but not always forming sterile margin, 25-54 x 5-7 microns, cylindric to narrowly fusoid, sometimes forked or septate once, thin-walled, colorless, occasionally with a few aggregated refractive droplets; cap cuticle a thin, gelatinized ixocutis of radially arranged, filamentous hyphae 2.5-4.5 microns wide, nearly colorless or with golden brown cytoplasmic segments; clamps mentioned for basidia, stem hyphae, and basal mycelium
Spore deposit: earthy brown between "avellaneous" and "deep olive buff" (milky-coffee or pale hazel according to Orton)
Habitat / Range
gregarious "on rotting plant remains (needles, leaves, twigs, bits of wood) in bogs, ditches and in drying temporary pools in coniferous forests"
Similar Species
Mythicomyces corneipes has rough spores which are "benzo-brown" rather than milky-coffee in deposit, and thick-walled cystidia, (Redhead(14)). Phaeocollybias can be similar in appearance, but the stem of Stagnicola perplexa not rooting, (Redhead(14)).