Summary:
{See also Dark Omphalinoid Arrhenia Table} Features include 1) a light grayish brown to dark brown, hygrophanous, depressed cap with a striate margin, 2) decurrent pale grayish brown gills, 3) a grayish brown stem, 4) mild odor and taste, 5) growth on decayed wood, and 6) a white spore deposit. Two color variants exist in North America. One has a dark brown to blackish cap and stem and gray gills and occurs most frequently on coniferous wood in the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest (but also Maine and Tennessee). The other has light grayish brown color throughout and occurs on hardwood in the northeastern states and Canada (but also Idaho and Alaska), (Bigelow).

Gills:
decurrent, subdistant; pale grayish brown, (Bessette), decurrent, often forming a collar on stem, close to subdistant, narrow to medium broad, up to 0.4cm broad, at times forking and interveined; gray or gray brown ("avellaneous", "drab", "pale smoke gray", "smoke gray"), slowly fading, (Bigelow)

Stem:
1.6-2.5cm x 0.2-0.4cm, widening slightly downward or nearly equal; dark brown to grayish brown; smooth, (Bessette), 1-3cm x 0.1-0.3cm, equal or base slightly enlarged, at times curved or undulate (wavy), solid, finally hollow; colored as cap or sometimes darker when old; bald in upper part, base sometimes with whitish basal tomentum, (Bigelow)

Odor:
not distinctive (Bessette, Bigelow)

Taste:
not distinctive (Bessette, Bigelow)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-9 x 3.5-5 microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, colorless, (Bessette), spores (6)7-9(11) x 4-5(5.5) microns, elliptic or broadly elliptic, sometimes polymorphic from 1-spored or 3-spored basidia, up to 13 x 6.5 microns, smooth, inamyloid; basidia usually 4-spored, sometimes 1-spored or 3-spored, (18)22-30 x 5.5-8 microns; clamp connections present, (Bigelow), spores 6.2-8.6 x 3.6-5.1 microns; basidia 4-spored, 15-25 x 6-7 microns, cylindric-clavate, with basal clamp; cheilocystidia: marginal cells on gills inconspicuous, vesicular to polymorphic-clavate, up to about 25 x 10 microns; cap cuticle of parallel hyphae 3-8 microns wide, brown-pigmented, septa with clamp connections, (Breitenbach)

Spore deposit:
white (Bessette, Bigelow)

Notes:
Bigelow examined collections from WA, OR, ID, also ON, QC, AK, CO, MA, ME, MI, MN, NH, NM, NY, TN, VT, WY, and Austria. It is found in CA (Desjardin). Kroeger(7) mention collections from BC at the University of British Columbia and the Pacific Forestry Centre.

EDIBILITY

unknown (Bessette)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Omphalina epichysium (Pers.) Quel.