Summary:
Features include 1) a whitish cap that when water-soaked has watery buff or brownish spots and areas overlain by hoar, 2) adnate to decurrent, crowded or close gills that are whitish to pale dingy cream or buff, 3) a whitish stem that is watery buff to brownish overall if water soaked, 4) a pungent or spicy fragrant odor, 5) cream color or pinkish spore deposit and 6) relatively small, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid spores. The online Species Fungorum, accessed February 15, 2015, includes Clitocybe cerussata (Fr.) Kumm. as a synonym.

Gills:
broadly adnate at first, short-decurrent to moderately decurrent when expanded, crowded or close, narrow to moderately broad, 0.2-0.7cm broad, usually not forking; "whitish to pale dingy cream color or buff", edges colored as faces; often finely interveined, edges even, (Bigelow), "decurrent, crowded, narrow to moderately broad; whitish to flesh-colored", (Phillips)

Stem:
1.5-7cm x 0.4-0.7(1.3)cm at top, equal or the base widened (up to 2.5cm wide); usually central, stuffed becoming hollow, compressed and curved at times, "base embedded in needles which adhere due to copious basal tomentum"; whitish overall "or with whitish longitudinal fibrils over a watery buff to brownish ground color", watery buff to brownish overall if water-soaked, (Bigelow), 2.5-6.5cm x 0.5-1.5cm, swollen at base; whitish or light tan; finely hairy and base covered by white down, (Phillips)

Odor:
"strong, sometimes without crushing flesh", "a pungent or spicy fragrance (not anise)", (Bigelow), strong, sweet, (Phillips)

Taste:
"mild except in old specimens which become rancid and unpleasant", (Bigelow), mild, becoming unpleasant when old, (Phillips)

Microscopic spores:
spores 4-5(5.5) x 2.5-3.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, cyanophilic; basidia 4-spored, 17-25(29) x 4-5.5 microns; cap surface hyphae cylindric, 2-5.5 microns wide, end cells protruding at times, cap trama of cylindric or inflated hyphae (4)6-13(16) microns wide; clamp connections present, (Bigelow), spores 4-4.5 x 3-3.5 microns, oval to elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, (Phillips), pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia not seen (Breitenbach)

Spore deposit:
cream color or pinkish, (Bigelow), pale ochraceous clay, (Phillips)

Notes:
Collections of Clitocybe phyllophila were examined from WA, MA, MI, VA, and VT, (Bigelow(5)). It also occurs in Europe, (Breitenbach). There are collections labeled Clitocybe cerussata from BC at the University of British Columbia.

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Lepista phyllophila (Fr.) Harmaja