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.

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)

Notes:
Collections examined from BC, WA, OR, ID, NL, ON, MI, and the United Kingdom (Scotland), (Redhead(14)).

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Phaeocollybia perplexa P.D. Orton