Summary:
Subgenus Sericeocybe. Section Spilomei. Features include hygrophanous gray-brown to yellow-brown cap sparsely covered with brown-red veil fibrils, violet young gills, gray-violet to gray-beige stem with copper red scales and bands, and microscopic characters. The description is derived from Breitenbach(5) except where noted.

Cap:
2-4(5)cm across, conic to hemispheric becoming bell-shaped to convex, +/- flat when old, "with a flat umbo or somewhat indented", "margin incurved, even, acute"; hygrophanous, gray-brown to yellow-brown, drying gray-yellow, often with a +/- distinct lilac tint, especially when young; dull to satiny, sparsely covered with brown-red veil fibrils, (Breitenbach), 1-5cm, violet-brown to red-brown, sometimes ocher brown, (Moser), somewhat viscid at first (Courtecuisse), 2-6cm across, convex then flattened, initially silky-shiny or fibrous, sometimes with red-brown fibrous scales, especially at margin; dry, (Buczacki)

Flesh:
thick in center of cap, thin toward margin; "whitish to gray-brown", (Breitenbach), pale violaceous brown (Courtecuisse), "pale brown to whitish" (Buczacki)

Gills:
broadly attached, broad, 42-55 reaching stem, 3-5 subgills between neighboring gills; "light violet when very young, then light gray-brown with a lilac tint", later increasingly rust brown; edges +/- smooth, (Breitenbach), violaceous then milky-coffee brown, (Moser), adnate-emarginate, fairly crowded; gray-violet to blue-gray, then pale ochraceous, then red-buff; edge +/- even, (Buczacki)

Stem:
4-6(8)cm x 0.5-0.8(1)cm, cylindric, base sometimes slightly clavate [club-shaped], "fragile, solid when young, hollow when old"; light gray-violet becoming gray-beige and the lower two-thirds irregularly banded to circumcinct [circumferentially banded] by copper-red velar scales, "the upper third smooth and slightly longitudinally fibrillose and with a lilac tinge for a long time", (Breitenbach), with copper brown scales on clay whitish to violaceous background, (Moser), 5-8cm, +/- equal or widening slightly downward, slightly bulbous at base, slender; dry, partial veil white forming ring zone, red-brown fibrous scales below ring, bluish at apex, white-woolly at base, (Buczacki)

Veil:
sparse covering of brown-red veil fibrils on cap, on stem copper-red veil scales form bands

Odor:
sweetish, unpleasant, (Breitenbach), faint, pleasant or indistinct, (Buczacki)

Taste:
mild, slightly radish-like, (Breitenbach), faint, pleasant or indistinct, (Buczacki)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6.4-8 x 5-6.3 microns, broadly elliptic to almost round, weakly verrucose, gray-ocher; basidia 4-spored, 26-30 x 6.5-8.5 microns, clavate to ventricose, with basal clamp connection; no pleurocystidia, marginal cells 16-23 x 3-4 microns, cylindric, "some flexuous, not abundant"; septa with clamp connections, (Breitenbach), spores 6-8 x 6-6.5 microns (Moser), spores 6-8 x 5-6.5 microns, broadly elliptic to nearly round, warty, (Buczacki)

Spore deposit:
red-brown

Notes:
Harrower(1) assigned a BC collection sequence 98 to Cortinarius spilomeus. Morphological correlation is desirable. It is known from North America and Europe including Switzerland, (Breitenbach(5)).

EDIBILITY