Summary:
Features include 1) a cinnabar red or vermilion or orange-brown cap with granular scales, 2) white gills, 3) a stem that is cap-colored and granulose below the ring zone and white above the ring zone, 4) a white spore deposit, 5) small elliptic inamyloid spores, and 6) cystidia capped with crystals. Vellinga(16) explains that the Cystodermella name is due to the discovery from molecular work that Cystoderma contained two groups that are not closely related - the ones with spores that are not amyloid (except Cystoderma japonicum) were renamed in Cystodermella.

Cap:
3-8cm across, "convex; deep cinnabar red to orange-brown; covered with granular, pyramidal spines or scales, easily brushed off", (Phillips), 3-6(8)cm across, ovoid to convex when young, becoming broadly convex, sometimes flat or remaining broadly umbonate; bright red to bright orange-brown with paler flesh showing between the scales; dry, covered with numerous short-pointed pyramidal scales from the breaking up of the granulose cuticle [cap skin], margin appendiculate at first with veil remnants, (Smith(15)), bright red to bright orange-brown with paler flesh showing between the scales over disc, usually paler over the margin, [also described as] varies in color from cinnabar red to reddish orange, there are several color forms that should perhaps be given recognition, (Smith(46)), sometimes becomes darker red when handled (Trudell)

Flesh:
white to reddish (Phillips), thin, somewhat watery; pallid or ferruginous near the cap surface, (Smith(15))

Gills:
"adnate, crowded; white", (Phillips), "bluntly adnate but soon seceding and free", close to crowded, broadest next to stem, but narrow in relation to the diameter of the cap, thin; white to creamy white, unchanging; edges even to minutely fimbriate [fringed], (Smith(15))

Stem:
3-8cm x 0.6-1.5cm, colored as cap, covered below ring with granular coating of scales, smooth above faint ring zone, (Phillips), 3-6cm x (0.6)0.8-1.5cm, more or less club-shaped, solid; cap-colored below ring zone and creamy-buff to pale rufous above it; sheathed up to the fleeting ring with a furfuraceous to granulose sheath similar in texture and color to the cap scales, "with an inner thin pallid fibrillose coating" giving stem a coarsely fibrillose appearance if outer colored layer worn away, above the ring zone silky fibrillose to somewhat pruinose, (Smith(15))

Veil:
faint ring zone (Phillips)

Odor:
not distinctive (Phillips), oily-farinaceous (Smith(15))

Taste:
mild (Phillips)

Microscopic spores:
spores 3.5-5 x 2-3 microns, elliptic, smooth, nonamyloid, (Phillips), spores 4-5 x 2.5-3 microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored or occasionally 2-spored, 20-24 x 5-6 microns; "pleurocystidia rare to abundant (on different gills), similar to cheilocystidia", cheilocystidia 30-46 x 5-9 microns, basal part slightly enlarged, almost spear-shaped at apex and usually slightly incrusted, colorless and thin-walled, the neck 2-3.5 microns wide; gill trama regular, subparallel to interwoven, colorless in KOH, subhymenium not distinctive; cap trama with a cuticle of spherical cells (10-35 microns) or cells more or less elongated (30-60 x 10-17 microns), "bright reddish brown in KOH, smooth-walled, beneath this a region of brown-walled filamentous hyphae which gradually merge into the hyaline flesh toward the gills, clamp connections present", (Smith(15)), spores 3.5-5 x 2.2-3(3.4) microns; basidia 4-spored, or occasionally very few 1-spored to 3-spored, (Smith(46))

Spore deposit:
white (Phillips, Smith(15))

Notes:
Smith(46) examined collections from WA, OR, CA, NS, ON, QC, MI, NC, NH, NY, OH, TN, WI, and Kurai in eastern Russia. There are collections at the University of British Columbia from BC (as Cystoderma cinnabarinum).

EDIBILITY

no (Phillips), reported as edible (Smith(15))

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Cystoderma cinnabarinum (Secr.) Fayod