Summary:
Subgenus Leprocybe. Features include a dry, golden brown to yellowish olive cap with dark brown scales especially at the center, pallid gills that soon become yellow or olive-tinged, and stem paler than the cap with a sparse covering of greenish yellow fibrils on the lower part. The cap often appears to be illustrated with hundreds of dark pointillist dots made on the olive-gold background. This species has often been misidentified as Cortinarius cotoneus. The description is derived from Kauffman(3) unless otherwise noted.

Cap:
3-6cm across, bell-shaped - convex, then flat, at first umbonate, at length depressed around vanishing umbo, margin incurved at first; dry, at first covered by dense, minute, "clove-brown" fibrillose scales, the "old-gold" ground color appearing later on the margin of the cap and between scales, the disc at length darker, margin sometimes decorated at first by the olivaceous-yellowish, silky cortina, (Kauffman), golden olive; dry, "covered with small dark brown to dark olive-brown, fibrillose scales, and the edge may be yellowish olive from veil fibrils at first", (Trudell)

Flesh:
thin except the disc, rather fragile; yellowish olivaceous, darker at first, sublutescent [becoming somewhat yellow] in stem

Gills:
adnate, then sinuate, close, usually rather narrow; at very first pallid, soon lutescent [becoming yellow] or with an olivaceous tinge, finally "raw-sienna"; the edge minutely white-flocculose, (Kauffman), close; "pale to yellowish or olive-tinted", becoming orange-brown when mature, (Trudell)

Stem:
6-10cm x 0.5-1(1.2)cm, rarely longer, equal or slightly enlarged in lower part, stuffed then hollow; obsoletely peronate [at first sheathed] by "light-green-yellow" universal veil, but usually merely fibrillose up to the obscure annular zone, or becoming bald, (Kauffman), typically "covered with light greenish yellow to yellowish veil fibrils", often with slight ring zone, (Trudell)

Veil:
olivaceous-yellowish, silky cortina, (Kauffman); universal veil yellow (Joseph Ammirati pers. comm.)

Odor:
distinctly that of radish or sometimes slight

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-7 x 5-6 microns, elliptic to nearly round, smooth under high magnification, dark rusty brown, [presumably without apical pore]

Spore deposit:
[presumably brownish]

Notes:
Cortinarius clandestinus is found at least in WA, OR, ID, CO, MI, and NY, and was examined from western AB, (Kernaghan). There is a Paul Kroeger collection from BC at the University of British Columbia.

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