Summary:
Features include 1) a pleated-grooved cap that is buff to honey brown (more rarely red-brown), with the margin soon becoming gray, 2) a cap surface with persistent, flocculent-granular specks, 3) narrowly attached, narrow gills that are cream then creamy gray, slowly deliquescing, 4) a whitish, dry, finely pruinose to smooth stem that occasionally has veil tissue on its lower part, 5) an orange-brown mat of spiky fibrils covering substrate around the fruitbodies. "This species resembles a few other inky caps, but can be told apart by the orangish mat of coarse, spiky hairs covering the substrate around the stipe base. If that feature is overlooked, the persistent, flocculent-granular specks on the cap are a helpful distinguishing feature.", (Siegel). The description is derived from Siegel(2).

Gills:
narrowly attached, "often becoming free", narrow, close, "edges often fringed when young, slowly deliquescing"; cream at first, "soon creamy gray, then blackish when spores mature"

Stem:
3-7cm x 0.2-0.4cm, equal or widening slightly toward base, hollow; whitish; "dry, finely pruinose to smooth", occasionally with veil tissue on lower part; base "often with whitish hairs"; "substrate around the fruitbodies is usually covered with an orangish to dark orange-brown mat of spiky fibrils called an ozonium, which may be inconspicuous at times"

Odor:
indistinct

Taste:
indistinct

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-9 x 3.5-5 microns, oval to elliptic with a truncate end, "smooth, thick walled with a germ pore, purplish black in KOH"; cheilocystidia 30-100 x 30-60 microns, "globose to ovoid"; pilocystidia "with a rounded base and long, narrow neck"

Spore deposit:
black

Notes:
Coprinellus domesticus is found in WA and OR (Danny Miller, pers. comm.). It occurs in CA (Siegel(2)). There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia. It also occurs elsewhere in North America and in Europe.

EDIBILITY

nontoxic (Siegel(2))

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Coprinus domesticus (Bolton) Gray