Summary:
Distinctive features are the overall dull orange to ochraceous color, the dry woolly-fibrillose cap with orange flesh, decurrent gills, growth with conifers, and smoky-black spore deposit. It is very common in the Pacific Northwest. Chroogomphus spp. are thought to be parasitic on the mycelia of boletes and in the Redwood Coast of California, Chroogomphus tomentosus appears associated with Boletus mirabilis in Western Hemlock habitat, (Siegel).

Cap:
2-9cm across, peg-like, becoming broadly conic to convex, umbonate or flat; "pale buffy-orange to pale or bright ochraceous or ochraceous-orange", may stain purple when old, fibrils sometimes tinged vinaceous; "dry to very slightly viscid, covered with flattened woolly or felty fibrils or fibrillose scales", (Arora), 2-6cm across, broadly convex becoming flat; pale to bright ochraceous, evenly colored, fibrils often with faint vinaceous tinge; dry, innately appressed tomentose overall, (Miller(1))

Flesh:
yellow-orange to dull orange or pale orange-buff, (Arora)

Gills:
decurrent or sometimes adnate, well-spaced, "yellow-orange to ochraceous or colored like cap", (Arora), decurrent, moderately distant, broad in the middle but tapering to each end, moderately thick; colored like cap but soon smoky umber from the spores, (Miller(1))

Stem:
4-18cm x (0.3)0.7-1.5(2)cm, equal or more often narrowing in lower part, solid; colored more or less like cap; dry and somewhat fibrillose, (Arora), 4-17cm x 0.9-1.4cm, base tapering rather abruptly to a root-like projection; colored like cap, showing ochraceous-orange color where handled or where fibrils removed; sparsely fibrillose, (Miller(1))

Veil:
"dry, fibrillose, scanty, colored like cap", "disappearing or leaving slight hairy remnants" on stem near top, (Arora), remnants of fibrillose veil sometimes seen on stem, (Miller(1))

Odor:
not distinctive (Miller(1))

Taste:
not distinctive (Miller(1))

Microscopic spores:
spores 15-25 x 6-9 microns, narrowly elliptic to spindle-shaped, smooth, (Arora), spores 15-25 x 6-8(9) microns, elliptic in face view, subfusiform [somewhat spindle-shaped] in side view, light gray brown in KOH, light to medium ochraceous in Melzer''s reagent but becoming darker after several hours; basidia 4-spored, 31-48 x 6-11 microns, clavate, colorless in KOH, in Melzer''s reagent yellow containing scattered amyloid granules; cystidia on gills 118-255 x 10-21 microns, cylindric to fusiform, with fairly thick walls 2-4 microns at thickest part, occasionally thin-walled, sometimes containing yellow-brown granules in KOH, "the walls faintly amyloid but yellow as seen in crushed mounts", contents colorless or dingy brown, apex often encrusted; cap cuticle of hyphae (5)8-13(14) microns wide, innate, nonviscid, colorless in KOH, "amyloid throughout becoming light violet with somewhat darker walls in crushed mounts but nevertheless sharply differentiated from the dark purple hyphae of the trama", "occasionally narrowly fusiform pilocystidia present"; no clamp connections seen on hyphae of fruitbody, the hyphae of mycelium at base of stem with scattered clamp connections, (Miller(1))

Spore deposit:
smoky-gray to blackish (Arora)

Notes:
Collections were examined from WA, OR, ID, CA, and it has also been reported from Japan, (Miller(1)). C. tomentosus is common also in BC and there are collections at the Pacific Forestry Center and the University of British Columbia.

EDIBILITY

yes, but better dried than fresh, (Arora)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Gomphidius tomentosus Murrill