Summary:
The presence of the white fibrillose zone left by the veil and the variously distributed veil remnants below it are distinctive field characters among the long-stemmed Galerina species on Sphagnum. (Smith). Other features are a hygrophanous tawny cap, which at first has white veil fibrils and at first is translucent-striate; ochraceous tawny gills; a "watery fragile" ochraceous stem with white fragments at first below the submembranous ring or fibrillose ring zone; and wrinkled spores with a smooth plage. Redhead mentions the velar tissue, wrinkled spores with a smooth plage, and ochraceous tawny gills as distinguishing it among Galerinas on Sphagnum, (Redhead(6)). This is the most common Galerina species in sphagnum bogs throughout the United States and Canada, though commoner in the east, and is also well known in Europe.

Cap:
(0.5)1-2.5(3)cm across, obtusely conic to convex when young, margin incurved against gills, rarely acutely conic expanding to bell-shaped or broadly convex to nearly flat, usually retaining a conic umbo; hygrophanous, '"ochraceous tawny" to "tawny" when fresh, fading to "ochraceous buff" or a duller yellow'; moist, at first with thin coating of white veil fibrils that soon separates into appressed to recurved hyphal fascicles that eventually disappear; margin translucent-striate before fading, (Smith), up to 3cm across, rusty ochraceous then yellowish ochraceous; fibrillose, striate, (Courtecuisse)

Flesh:
thin, fragile; colored more or less as cap surface, (Smith)

Gills:
adnate or with decurrent tooth, close to subdistant, broad; melleous [honey-colored] to pallid brownish when young, ochraceous tawny or darker when old, edges whitish; edges even to minutely crenulate [scalloped], (Smith), not very close; brownish honey, (Courtecuisse)

Stem:
(5)7-16(20)cm x (0.1)0.15-0.3(0.4)cm, equal, watery fragile, usually undulate [wavy]; watery ochraceous; at first with scattered bits of white veil adhering irregularly or in zones below the ring, becoming more or less bald, (Smith), up to 20cm tall and 0.4cm wide, yellowish ochraceous, darker in lower part, wreathed with white cortina, ring zone present, (Courtecuisse), universal veil remnants covering stem in a flame pattern (Schalkwijk-Barendsen)

Veil:
usually with a superior to apical, submembranous, white ring or fibrillose zone, and with scattered bits of veil adhering irregularly or in zones below ring, veil remnants also on cap surface at first, (Smith)

Odor:
not distinctive (Smith), mealy (Courtecuisse)

Taste:
not distinctive (Smith)

Microscopic spores:
spores (8)9-10.5(11) x (5)6-7(8) microns, broadly ovate to subelliptic in face view and slightly inequilateral in side view, smooth to very slightly punctate to rugulose [wrinkled] as revived in KOH, plage distinct, apical callus present, spores tawny in KOH and about the same in Melzer''s reagent; basidia 4-spored; pleurocystidia none, cheilocystidia abundant, (25)30-44.5 x 6-12 x 3-5 x 3.5-9 microns, "fusoid-ventricose with obtuse apices or if subcapitate 6.7-9 microns at apex, rarely cylindric, thin-walled or rarely with slight thickenings in the wall or with incrustations", colorless to pale melleous in KOH; clamp connections present, (Smith)

Spore deposit:
rust (Schalkwijk-Barendsen)

Notes:
Collections were examined from WA, AB, MB, NB, NS, ON, QC, AK, CT, MA, ME, MI, NC, NY, and the United Kingdom, and it has also been recorded from northern and central Europe to western, central, and far eastern USSR, (Redhead(6)). It was reported from BC in Kroeger(3). There are collections from BC and AB at the University of British Columbia. There are collections from WA, AK, and MI at the University of Washington.

EDIBILITY

unknown, do not experiment, (Schalkwijk-Barendsen)