Summary:
Features include a dry, drab cap with a salmon center, pale orange flesh, decurrent orange-gray to gray gills, cinnamon-buff to ochraceous stem whose fibrils become reddish from handling, smoky gray spore deposit, large spores, and (compared to C. tomentosus) thinner-walled cystidia. Chroogomphus leptocystis is uncommon and the differentiation from the common Chroogomphus tomentosus is primarily microscopic, although the cap according to Arora(1) "usually grayish, at least at margin" (he also says cap is "grayer" than C. tomentosus) whereas in C. tomentosus, it is "pale to dull orange, yellow-orange, or ochraceous".

Cap:
2-9cm across, convex with low, broadly conic umbo, nearly flat when old, margin inrolled at first; dark salmon to light ochraceous salmon over cap center, remainder a drab ground color; dry, coarsely fibrillose to minutely scaly over cap center, (Bessette), 2.5-9cm broad, disc with low, broadly conic umbo, intermediate area sloping slightly, margin decurved [downcurved]; central area tinged dark salmon "ochraceous-salmon", marginal area with more or less drab ground color to gray, but the tips of scales showing "ochraceous-salmon"; dry, coarsely fibrillose, over disc minutely squamulose [finely scaly], "toward margin the fibrils grouped into appressed patches", (Miller)

Flesh:
firm; pale orange, yellow at the base, (Bessette), thick; near pale orange "capucine-buff" or paler "pale apricot", changing slightly to purplish red along cuticle when cut and around worm holes; in stem pale orange (near "capucine buff"), yellow to dingy yellow at base, (Miller)

Gills:
decurrent, subdistant, broad, with 3 tiers of subgills, many forked; orange-gray to gray when young, becoming darker as spores mature, (Bessette), decurrent, subdistant, up to 1.3cm broad, tapered either way, in 3 tiers, many of them forked; "clay-color" but dusted darker by spores, (Miller)

Stem:
6-13cm x 0.6-2cm, narrowing downward; cinnamon-buff to ochraceous brown, fibrils reddish from handling, becoming smoky-black from spores when old; dry, minutely fibrillose, (Bessette), 6-13cm x 0.2-0.8cm, narrowing downward, solid but often worm-riddled and torn; upper part purplish red, the rest flavous, base yellow or sordid ochraceous-brown; fibrillose and with a fibrillose ring at top, flavous but fibrils reddish from handling, (Miller)

Veil:
dense fibrillose partial veil on cap, superior fibrillose annular ring just at the stem top, (Bessette)

Odor:
not distinctive (Bessette), none (Miller)

Taste:
slightly acidic (Bessette), slightly acidulous (Miller)

Microscopic spores:
spores 12-18 x 6-7 microns, elliptic in face view, subfusiform [somewhat spindle-shaped] in side view, smooth, inamyloid, light gray-brown in KOH; basidia 4-spored, 24-52 x 6-10 microns, clavate, orange-red in Melzer''s reagent turning yellow to colorless with a bluish tint in crushed mounts, colorless in KOH; cystidia (presumably on gills) 103-187 x 15-18 microns, cylindric to fusiform, thin-walled (1-1.5 microns), occasionally thick-walled, in Melzer''s reagent colorless or with weakly amyloid walls or often amyloid near center of cystidium only, colorless in KOH; cap cuticle of hyphae 4.5-10 microns in diameter, filamentous, nonviscid, innate, colorless in KOH and in Melzer''s reagent, cap trama of interwoven hyphae (10)12-16(18) microns, yellow-brown, colorless to yellow in Melzer''s reagent with an occasional distinctly amyloid hypha, in KOH yellow brown; no clamp connections seen on hyphae of fruiting body, but vegetative hyphae not examined, (Miller); spores 12-18 x 6-7 microns, elliptic in face view, subfusiform in side view, smooth, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored, 24-52 x 6-10 microns, clavate, thin-walled; cheilocystidia and pleurocystidia 100-195 x 15-18 microns, cylindric to fusiform, slightly thick-walled (1-1.5 microns thick); cap cuticle of interwoven filamentous hyphae 4.5-10 microns wide, colorless in Melzer''s reagent, with hypha-like end cells; cap trama of interwoven hyphae 10-18 microns wide, thin-walled, with scattered amyloid hyphae in Melzer''s reagent; clamp connections present only on the amyloid vegetative hyphae beneath fruitbody, amyloid hyphal cells are found in the cap trama of all Chroogomphus species but the narrow hyphal end cells in the pileipellis, reduced amyloid tramal tissue, and only slightly thickened walls of the cystidia distinguish C. leptocystis from C. tomentosus, (Bessette)

Spore deposit:
smoky gray (Bessette)

Notes:
It has been found in BC, WA, OR, and ID, according to Bessette.

EDIBILITY

edible (Bessette)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Gomphidius leptocystis Singer