Summary:
Subgenus Telamonia Section Megaspori. Cortinarius casimiri is characterized by 1) a hygrophanous, umbonate cap which is whitish-fibrillose on a dark red-brown to wine-brown background, 2) a stem that is entirely lilac-brown when young, and 3) large spores. Breitenbach(5) gives Cortinarius subsertipes Romagn. as a synonym, but Moser(1) gives Cortinarius subsertipes Kuehner separately. The description here is derived from Breitenbach(5).

Cap:
2-3(5)cm across, acutely conic when young, later bell-shaped to flat and usually more or less acutely umbonate, "marginal zone often wrinkled to somewhat undulating", margin even and acute; hygrophanous, dark red-brown to wine-brown when moist and young, gray-brown to ocher-brown sometimes with a pink tint when dry; dull, covered with fine, whitish veil fibrils

Flesh:
thin; gray-beige to dark purple-brown

Gills:
broadly attached and subdecurrent [somewhat decurrent], 24-32 gills reach stem, broad, 1-3(5) subgills between each pair of gills; gray-reddish when young, later gray-brown to cinnamon-brown; edges slightly crenate [scalloped]

Stem:
3-8cm x 0.25-0.55cm, cylindric, base sometimes slightly bulbous, stem "flexible, solid when young, hollow when old"; "densely covered over the entire length by the whitish veil when young, later whitish circumcinct" [circumferentially banded] "to irregularly banded on a lilac-brown to red-brown background, often with a fibrillose-membranous annulus, apex lilac even in mature specimens, base reddening"

Veil:
margin joined to stem by a dense, whitish, filamentous cortina when young; later often with a fibrillose-membranous annulus

Odor:
weak, not distinctive

Taste:
mild, pleasant

Microscopic spores:
spores 9.2-12.3 x 5-7.4 microns, elliptic, moderately verrucose, light yellow; basidia 4-spored, 26-40 x 8-10 microns, cylindric to clavate, with basal clamp connection; no cystidia or marginal cells; cap cuticle of periclinal hyphae 3.5-12 microns wide, colorless to yellow and mostly encrusted, septa with clamp connections

Spore deposit:
rust brown

Notes:
Cortinarius casimiri has been reported at least from OR (Lorelei Norvell, pers. comm.), BC (collections at University of British Columbia), and Europe (Breitenbach). Harrower(1) assigned a BC collection sequence 135 to Cortinarius casimiri. Morphological correlation is desirable.

EDIBILITY