E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia

Summary:
Clitocybe sclerotoidea is recognized by small size, dingy color, and the habit of growing in compact clumps from a fleshy mass of tissue. Trappe has presented evidence that the sclerotoid masses are of Helvella lacunosa parasitized by C. sclerotoidea (Bigelow(5)).

Clitocybe sclerotoidea was examined from WA and CA, and reported by Trappe from OR, (Bigelow(5)). There are collections from BC deposited at the University of British Columbia.

Cap:
0.5-4(5)cm across, convex to flat or slightly depressed centrally; pallid to sordid buff [dingy buff] to brownish or grayish, "sometimes with darker watery spots"; dry, unpolished, with a fine whitish fibrillose coating that rubs off, (Arora), 0.8-4(5)cm across, convex at first, slowly expanding to flat, finally nearly infundibuliform [funnel-shaped], margin inrolled then narrowly decurved [downcurved], finally elevated and broadly undulate [wavy], disc often subumbonate [somewhat umbonate] but becoming flattened; 'sordid buff (sordid "pale pinkish buff" to "pinkish buff"), watery spots darker (near "clay color")', not hygrophanous; densely matted fibrillose under hand lens, usually unpolished or canescent [hoary] to the eye, when old with watery sordid buff spots, margin not striate, (Bigelow)

Flesh:
whitish, (Arora), thick on disc, thinning abruptly at stem then gradually to margin; whitish, in stem sordid watery buff, (Bigelow)

Gills:
adnate or notched becoming decurrent; pale buff or pinkish buff, darkening to gray, olive-gray, or grayish brown, (Arora), adnate or sinuate at first, becoming short-decurrent to moderately decurrent, usually evenly and forming a collar on stem, subdistant, moderately broad, occasionally forked and interveined; pale buff to buff at first, darkening to grayish brown; edges sometimes serrate, (Bigelow)

Stem:
2-4(8)cm x 0.3-1cm, "equal or thicker at either end, solid"; colored as cap "or paler from soft, matted, downy white hairs", arising from a fleshy tissue mass that is often partly or completely buried, (Arora), 2-4(8)cm x 0.3-1.1(1.5)cm at top, "equal or tapering either way", central to eccentric [off-center], compressed [flattened] at times, "solid, fleshy and fibrous"; white or watery buff; with matted tomentum, often appressed then watery-looking, base tomentose at times, base with large irregular sclerotium, up to 6cm x 4cm, white tomentose on outside, (Bigelow)

Odor:
mild (Arora), not distinctive (Bigelow)

Taste:
not distinctive (Bigelow)

Microscopic spores:
spores 8-11 x 3-4 microns, elongated subfusiform [somewhat spindle-shaped], smooth, (Arora), spores 8-10(11) x 3-4 microns, subfusoid [somewhat spindle-shaped], somewhat inequilateral in side view, smooth, inamyloid; basidia 2- or 4-spored, 17-28 x 5-7 microns; [presumably pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia absent]; sclerotium "inamyloid, organized into walls and locules, of tightly interwoven hyphae, locules of loosely interwoven hyphae, cylindric, 3-6 microns diam, or inflated, up to 21 microns diam, walls thin"; clamp connections present, (Bigelow)

Spore deposit:
white (Arora)