Summary:
Features include relative large size (for a Crepidotus), a fan-shaped or kidney-shaped to nearly round cap, gelatinous texture when wet, fibrillose scales on the cap when young, brown mature gills, absent or short stem, brown spore deposit, and microscopic characters.

Cap:
1-5(8)cm, fan-shaped or kidney-shaped to nearly round, convex to flat; surface gelatinous in wet weather beneath a dense to rather sparse coating of fulvous to rusty-ocher to brown fibrils or small scales, when old often smooth and varying in color from tawny to pale ocher to brown, or fading to whitish, (Arora), 1-5(8)cm, kidney-shaped to obovate, soon flat, with a gelatinous cuticle, flaccid; hygrophanous, olive brown when moist becoming shining and ochraceous-whitish when dry; brownish fibrillose or scaly to apparently bald, margin faintly striatulate [finely striate], (Hesler)

Flesh:
soft, thin, soon flaccid; pallid, (Arora), thin; white, (Hesler)

Gills:
close, radiating from base of cap; whitish becoming brown or dull cinnamon, (Arora), decurrent, radiating, crowded to close, "broad or moderately broad or moderately narrow"; whitish, becoming cinnamon; the edges at times gelatinous and fimbriate [fringed], var. cystidiosus has gills that are "tilleul-buff" (Ridgway color) when young and differs from var. mollis chiefly in this character and the presence of pleurocystidia, (Hesler)

Stem:
absent or rudimentary (Hesler)

Odor:
mild (Hesler)

Taste:
mild or more rarely bitter (Hesler)

Microscopic spores:
spores 7-11 x 4.5-6.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, (Arora), spores 7-8(10) x 4.5-5.5(6.5) microns, elliptic in face view, slightly inequilateral in side view, smooth, brownish in 2% KOH, double wall, [no germ pore]; pleurocystidia none (except in var. cystidiosus found in WA with pleurocystidia "at times found chiefly on the lower half of the gill", 47-52 x 5-6 microns, "subcylindric or subfusoid, at times with a slight neck"), cheilocystidia of 2 types: 1) hymenial, 30-60 x 6-8 microns, "flask-shaped to irregularly cylindric", 2) tramal, 70-105 x 4-6 microns, "filamentous, the apices more or less enlarged, gelatinous"; cap tissue interwoven with hyphae 5-12 microns broad; cap cuticle a distinct gelatinous zone, 130-500 microns thick, the hyphae interwoven and narrow (1.5-2 microns), "the surface bearing repent to erect tufts of fuscous or colorless hyphae, some of the former incrusted"; clamp connections absent, (Hesler)

Spore deposit:
dull brown to yellowish-brown (Arora)

Notes:
Crepidotus mollis has been found at least in BC (Davidson, Lowe), WA, OR, and ID, (Hesler). Hesler(3) also studied material from MA, ME, MI, NC, NH, NM, NY, OH, TN, Jamaica, Ecuador, Czechoslovakia, France, Netherlands, and United Kingdom. It is found also in CA (Desjardin). Var. cystidiosus was described by Hesler and Smith only from WA.

EDIBILITY

no (Phillips)