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Species Information
Summary: Features include small size, a hygrophanous, yellow to brownish yellow or greenish yellow cap, decurrent yellowish or greenish yellow gills, a yellowish or greenish yellow stem, a creamy white spore deposit, and growth on conifer wood or debris. The description is derived from Norvell(1) except where noted. It is uncommon in Pacific Northwest.
Collections were examined from WA, OR, ID, CA, Czech Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, (Norvell). It has been reported from BC (Paul Kroeger, pers. comm.), and is also found in Japan (Castellano), and North Africa (Breitenbach).
Cap: 2-3.5(6)cm across, convex to flat-convex with incurved margin when young, becoming convex-umbilicate to uplifted when old, extreme margin even, crenate [scalloped] or occasionally sulcate [grooved]; hygrophanous, initially yellow to brownish yellow or greenish yellow, becoming paler with age or even whitish; margin yellow to greenish yellow; bald, moist, striate to disc
Flesh: thin 0.1cm over disc); pale yellow, in stem pliable and pale yellow
Gills: decurrent, arcuate, distant, 1-2 tiers of subgills, 0.1-0.15(0.3)cm broad, 0.05-0.08(0.1)cm thick, often interveined; yellowish or greenish yellow, becoming slightly paler to whitish with exposure or when old, (retaining greenish-yellow color longer than cap), (Norvell), decurrent, broad, thickish, 16-18 reaching stem, 0-1 subgills between each pair of gills, rarely forked; light yellow; edges smooth, (Breitenbach)
Stem: 0.5-4(5.5)cm x 0.15-0.7(1)cm at top, central, more or less equal, usually hollow; yellowish or greenish-yellow, "gradually paling toward base with age" (stem fading towards whitish, the top of the stem retaining the greenish yellow color for a longer period); appearing bald to naked eye but sparsely minutely pubescent [downy] under magnification, (Norvell)
Odor: not distinctive (Norvell), faintly herbaceous (Breitenbach)
Taste: not distinctive
Microscopic spores: spores 5.9-9.6 x 3.7-5.5(6) microns, elliptic to somewhat elliptic with conspicuous apiculus, smooth, inamyloid, colorless, thin-walled, often one central oil droplet; basidia 4-spored, rarely 2-spored, 33-48 x 5-8 microns, cylindric to narrowly clavate, ratio of basidioles to sterigmate basidia very high; cheilocystidia absent, pleurocystidia absent; clamp connections absent
Spore deposit: whitish in thin deposits, creamy white on paper, may appear very slightly greenish when deposited on glass
Habitat / Range
gregarious to cespitose [in tufts] on water-soaked conifer wood, bark chips, conifer debris (occasionally on hardwood mixed with colonized conifer wood), in mixed forests or parks, (Norvell), fruiting in fall (Castellano), summer, fall, (Buczacki)
Similar Species
The yellow or faded forms of Lichenomphalia umbellifera may be similar if the latter are growing on conifer logs, but Lichenomphalia umbellifera 1) is surrounded at the base by green lichen thallus, 2) may develop fairly conspicuous pubescence on stem (unlike C. grossula), and 3) hyphae in the cap and gill trama are relatively narrow (4-10 microns wide) and not normally swollen at the septa (those hyphae in Chrysomphalina grossula markedly are inflated, reaching 22 microns wide, and constricted at the septa), (Norvell). Chrysomphalina aurantiaca is uniformly orange. Chrysomphalina chrysophylla usually lacks greenish tints: Norvell(1) says C. chrysophylla never has greenish tints - Siegel(2) on the other hand says that C. chrysophylla may be olive-gold at first and that C. grossula has pale yellowish green colors when young. The key in Norvell(1) differentiates them as follows: for C. grossula, "Basidiomes bright greenish-yellow when young, becoming yellower or paler with age but not exhibiting orangish hues at any stage; tramal cells frequently femur-like at maturity (cf. Fig. 7); basidiospores with broadly rounded ends (cf. Fig. 3)" and for C. chrysophylla "Basidiomes with orange (orange, pinkish orange, or orangish yellow), never greenish tints; tramal cells rarely femur-like; basidiospores elongated, with many slightly tapered toward the apex (cf. Figs. 8-10)".
