Summary:
Features include 1) a small whitish cap with a reddish brown, papillate to umbilicate disc, reddish brown matted silky hairs (often in a radial and/or concentric pattern), the cap surface often with one or two concentric ridges, 2) thin, tough off-white cap flesh, 3) adnate to free, whitish gills, 4) a filamentous, horny to pliant, reddish brown to dark brown stem with a coating of lighter colored hairs, inserting directly into substrate without a basal disc, 5) rhizomorphs that are thinner and more flexible than the stem, and 6) growth on dead stems of plants including grasses, or on hardwood litter, or sometimes on conifer needles or twigs. The synonymies given are from the online Species Fungorum, accessed March 23, 2014. The Redhead(54) description is for Crinipellis setipes (Peck) Singer and it should be noted that the key distinguished Crinipellis stipitaria from C. setipes. C. stipitaria is said to grow on graminoid hosts in grassland, with spores over 5 microns wide, and oval to amygdaliform, and mycelial strands sometimes present but lacking differentiated cortices. C. setipes on the other hand grows scattered on deciduous, leaf and twig litter or occasionally conifer needles or scales or twigs, spores are 6-8 x 3-4 microns, narrowly elliptic to subcylindric, and short stipe-like rhizomorphs are present with differentiated cortices or internal tissues.

Gills:
"free, moderately narrow, crowded to subcrowded, occasionally subventricose"; "off-white with whitish edge", (Redhead), adnate-free, distant; white-cream, (Buczacki), deep; white, (Moser), fairly tough, adnexed or nearly free, medium spaced, thick; off-white, (Laessoe)

Stem:
2.8-8.5cm x 0.02-0.05(0.1)cm, insitituous [presumably insititious - devoid of fibrils or hyphae at point of attachment to substrate]; the upper part straight, "corneous to pliant", the base "often slightly bent or irregular"; sienna to fulvous at the top, bay to chestnut or dark brick lower down; with "a sparse to copious pubescent vestiture of paler hairs, often with some cinnamon patches of mycelium near the base where contacting the litter"; the rhizomorphs thinner (0.01-0.05cm) and more flexible than the stem, (Redhead), 0.5-3cm, "equal, slender, often tapering at base", usually curved, densely red-brown hairy, (Buczacki), 2-3.5cm x 0.05-0.1cm, sooty; furrowed, tomentose, (Moser), "tough, wavy stem with clusters of stiff, gray to brown hairs" (Laessoe - italicized)

Odor:
indistinct (Buczacki)

Taste:
indistinct (Buczacki)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-8 x 3-4 microns, narrowly elliptic to subcylindric, smooth, inamyloid, colorless, thin-walled; basidia 4-spored, 21-26 x 6.5-7.0 microns, "aculeate when young, clavate", with clamp connections; cheilocystidia 10-20 x 6-7.5 microns, short-cylindric to clavate-pedicellate, colorless, "with thin refractive walls", and 4-8 simple or branched irregular fingerlike processes up to 3.5 microns long; cap cuticle "a compact layer of swollen cells", 5-12 microns wide, "with thin to slightly thickened walls" and in the upper part of the cuticle "incrusted with reddish brown pigments", "bearing superficial intermixed hairs of three kinds: thick-walled, setiform hairs with secondary septa and acute apices; sinuous hairs with thinner walls; and a few swollen clavate or ellipsoidal cells sometimes giving rise to hairs"; cap trama of subparallel hyphae, 5-11 microns wide, inamyloid, colorless, and thin-walled, with clamp connections; gill trama hyphae similar to those in cap trama; stipe cortex hyphae 3-4 microns wide, "with thickened brownish walls, bearing on the surface a loose layer of filamentous hyphae" 2-3 microns wide "with refractive, thin walls, and which give rise to setiform hairs with secondary septa" as on the cap, "or the setiform borne directly by the cortical cells"; stem trama mainly of parallel hyphae 5-8 microns wide, colorless, faintly dextrinoid, thin-walled; context of rhizomorphs little differentiated from that of stem "and usually gives rise to a few setiform hairs", (Redhead), spores 8.5-9.5 x 4.5-6 microns, broadly elliptic, smooth, (Buczacki), spores 6-9 x 4-8 microns (Moser)

Spore deposit:
white (Buczacki)

Notes:
C. scabella was found by Sharon Godkin in Victoria, BC (as Crinipellis stipitaria on grass roots). Crinipellis stipitaria is widespread and locally common in northern temperate zones, widely distributed in northeastern and northcentral US, (Laessoe), Crinipellis scabella is widespread in "Britain and Ireland" (Buczacki). Crinipellis stipitaria is found in Europe (Moser). Crinipellis setipes has been found in eastern Canada (including ON, PQ) and in China and Russia (Redhead).

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Crinipellis setipes (Peck) Singer