Summary:
Features include 1) a cap covered with lilac to lavender powder that may fade when old, 2) crowded, creamy to pale yellow gills, 3) a lavender stem that is covered at first with lavender powder and becomes dark purple at the base especially where bruised, 4) a coal tar odor, and 5) a white spore deposit. It is rare in the Pacific Northwest.

Cap:
2.5-4.5cm across, bell-shaped, becoming expanded-umbonate to broadly convex; cap covered with lilac to vinaceous-lilac granulose covering at least around the disc, ("dark lavender" to "deep dull lavender"), becoming duller when old, ("benzo brown" to near "drab" at times), 'and at times sordid grayish with a tinge of vinaceous, the margin sometimes pallid, drying pallid to pale yellowish'; 'margin at first fringed with veil remnants', (Smith), whitish to pale lilac; mealy, (Phillips), "covered with lilac to lavender powder that may fade in age; margin at first powdery and colored like the disc, aging paler", (Sieger), 1-2(2.5)cm across, "whitish violet to pale violet, cream to pale ocher when old"; margin fimbriate [fringed] from whitish veil remnants when young, (Breitenbach)

Flesh:
thin; white, in base becoming dark violet, (Smith), thin, whitish to lilac, (Phillips), thin, whitish, somewhat violet under cap surface, (Breitenbach)

Gills:
[free], crowded, broadest near stem and tapering to margin; pale yellow ("ivory yellow"), (Smith), free, crowded; pale yellow, (Sieger), free, 28-33 reaching stem, 3 subgills between neighboring gills, gills broad; cream white to pale yellow; edges smooth, (Breitenbach)

Stem:
4-10cm x 0.2-0.4cm, equal, hollow; with an evanescent [fleeting] pruinose lavender sheath that "terminates in a powdery evanescent apical zone, often becoming more or less pallid in age", (Smith), 2.5-4.5cm x 0.3-0.5cm, hollow, sometimes tapering slightly at base; pale lavender at top becoming dark purple in lower part especially when bruised; somewhat scurfy, (Phillips), covered in lower part with lavender powder that does not persist, (Sieger), 2.5-6cm x 0.2-0.4cm, cylindric, solid becoming hollow, "white-powdered on a violet background when young", dark violet to black-violet and becoming bald when old, sometimes with a fugacious [fleeting] ring zone, (Breitenbach)

Veil:
ring not persistent (Sieger)

Odor:
strong, vile, resembling that of coal tar, (Smith), strongly and unpleasantly gas-like, (like Tricholoma sulphureum), (Breitenbach)

Taste:
mild (Smith), mild, unpleasant, (Breitenbach)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-7.5 x 2.8-3 microns, somewhat bullet-shaped, smooth, inamyloid (pale yellow in iodine); basidia 4-spored, 22-25 x 7.8 microns, pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia absent; gill trama subparallel, colorless in KOH; cap cuticle formed of chains of readily separable spherical cells 15-38 microns in diameter, "thin-walled and readily collapsing, the walls lilaceous in water mounts of fresh material", colorless in KOH, (Smith), spores 7.5-10 x 3-3.5 microns, weakly dextrinoid, (Phillips), spores 6-7.5 × 2.8-3 µm, subfusiform, some with an almost truncate basal end, without a germ pore, pale yellow in Melzer''s reagent; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia absent; "cap cuticle chains of globose cells interwoven with narrow hyphae", (Sieger), 7.1-9.1 x 2.6-3.9 microns, fusiform to bullet-shaped, with lateral apiculus, smooth, dextrinoid, thick-walled; basidia without clamp connections, some cap cuticle hyphae with clamp connections, (Breitenbach)

Spore deposit:
white (Smith)

Notes:
Smith found it in WA and OR, and Hesler in TN, (Smith(15)). It occurs in the Pacific Northwest and ID, (Phillips). It has also been found in Europe including Switzerland (Breitenbach). Kroeger(5) report it from BC.

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Lepiota bucknallii (Berk. & Broome) Sacc.