Summary:
Features include 1) relatively small size, 2) a hygrophanous, yellow-brown to chestnut, striate cap, 3) light cinnamon-brown to pale ochraceous yellow fringed gills, 4) ovate - almond-shaped rough spores, and 5) pleurocystidia of metuloid character. Galerina nana is widely distributed in North America but not common: it is in truly native habitats only in Central and South America.

Cap:
0.6-2.3cm across, bell-shaped to hemispherical or convex, "typically with papilla, or sometimes obtusely umbonate", eventually convex-flat with a slight umbo or papilla, margin not incurved at first; hygrophanous, "yellowish brown to light brown with darker center, in young caps with rather dark ochraceous brown disc and striations, somewhat paler between striations", fading with drying to alutaceous or stramineous brownish, but the umbo if present often retaining more brown; subviscid, appearing dull when wet, transparently striate up to 0.6cm from margin, smooth or becoming rugose-sulcate (independently of the transparent striations), (Smith), up to 2cm across, chestnut, margin yellowish honey; bald, striate, (Courtecuisse)

Flesh:
thin to moderately thick (Smith)

Gills:
adnate, rarely sinuate, becoming adnate-decurrent, often seceding, subdistant (in medium sized fruiting bodies about 14-15 reaching stem), the broadest gills about 0.3cm broad; pale cinnamon-brownish, eventually more rusty ochre-brown, (Smith), pale ochraceous yellow; edge fringed, (Courtecuisse)

Stem:
1.2-3.9cm x 0.1-0.4cm, more or less equal or widening downward, often curved or flexuous [wavy], tubular; more or less colored as cap, varying from slightly to distinctly darker brown at the base than at the top, finally usually deep brown or deep chestnut brown in lower part; white fibrillose in lower part, finely furfuraceous to pruinose at top, becoming bald throughout, basal white tomentum often present, (Smith), up to 5cm tall and 0.2cm wide, honey to brownish, base with a series of white bands, (Courtecuisse)

Veil:
lower stem white fibrillose with fine almost silky appressed fibrils, without ring, or rarely with delicate fleeting annular belt, (Smith)

Odor:
light or indistinct, or slightly farinaceous, (Smith)

Taste:
mild (Smith)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6.5-16.2 x 4.8-6.7 microns, specifically from 4-spored 6.5-10.8 x 4.8-6.2 microns and from 2-spored 9.5-16.2 x 5-6.7 microns, oval - almond-shaped in face view, somewhat inequilateral in side view, with inconspicuous warty ornamentation, well-marked plage in mature spores, with apical callus; basidia 4-spored or rarely 2-spored intermixed, 21.5-24 x 7.5-8.2 microns, in other collections somewhat longer (up to 27 microns) and 6-7.5 microns wide and 2-spored; pleurocystidia numerous reminding one of the metuloids of Inocybe and certainly of metuloid character, with thick wall (0.8-1.6 microns), in a minority thinner-walled (mostly 0.4-0.8 microns), colorless, citrinous or clay yellowish (melleous) in NH4OH, the very apex with a crown of needle-like to granular crystalline incrustations that are colorless to brownish yellow, "shape of cystidium fusoid-ventricose with the thickest part in the middle, pedicellate, with attenuate but obtuse apex", metachromatic in cresyl blue, 40-75 x 11-22 microns, cheilocystidia present but similar to pleurocystidia, near cap margin occur scattered vesiculose pedicellate bodies (6.8-9.7 microns); clamp connections present, (Smith), spores "amydaliform, ornamented with plage, dextrinoid and cyanophilic", (Gulden)

Spore deposit:
mid-brown (Buczacki)

Notes:
Rees(1) use a collection from OR. There are collections from WA at the University of Washington and collections from BC at the University of British Columbia.

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Galera nana (Petri) Kuehner
Galerula velenovskyi Kuehner
Naucoria montana Murrill