Details about map content are available here Click on the map dots to view record details.
Species Information
Summary: Features include 1) a hygrophanous tawny to ochraceous tawny, conic, striate cap, 2) adnate gills colored as the cap, 3) a fragile stem colored as the cap but paler when old and pruinose-downy in the upper part at first, 4) growth in sphagnum bogs, 5) wrinkled-warty spores, and 6) cheilocystidia with a head on them. The description is derived from Smith(2) except where noted. Smith(2) do not specifically say it is present in the Pacific Northwest, but do say, "common in sphagnum bogs of northern and mountainous regions of the United States, Canada, Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, and Japan, fruiting from May until Nov. in considerable abundance".
There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia including one from the Vancouver area, and collections from AK and MI at the University of Washington.
Cap: 1-3(3.5)cm across, conic with slightly incurved margin when young, obtusely conic when old or umbonate with spreading margin; strongly hygrophanous, "tawny" to "ochraceous tawny", drying to various shades of ochraceous buff; bald, translucent-striate when moist, opaque when faded
Flesh: thin, watery, soft; pale ochraceous tawny drying pallid
Gills: "bluntly adnate, somewhat ascending but becoming horizontal", "moderately close to subdistant, narrow to moderately broad" (up to 0.5cm broad); more or less colored as cap; edges even
Stem: 5.5-10(20)cm x 0.2-0.35cm, equal or nearly so, weak and very fragile, hollow; colored as young caps but paler when old, pallid to whitish in part covered by moss; pruinose-pubescent [powdery-downy] in upper part at first, soon appearing bald
Taste: "slightly unpleasant but not distinctive"
Microscopic spores: spores 8.5-11(14) x 5-6(7) microns, ovate in face view, somewhat inequilateral in side view, with rugulose-warty [wrinkled-warty] exosporium, "plage nearly smooth or with indefinite boundaries in some", with minute apical callus, dark tawny to russet in KOH; basidia 4-spored, rarely 1-, 2-, and 3-spored intermixed, 26-32 x 9-10.5 microns, narrowly clavate, colorless in KOH; pleurocystidia none, cheilocystidia abundant, 36-60 x 8-12 x 3-4 microns, ventricose at base, with narrow neck and a head at top [tibiiform], many subcylindric-capitate [somewhat cylindric with a head], pedicel often with secondary septations; clamp connections present
Spore deposit: red-brown (Buczacki)
Habitat / Range
sphagnum bogs (Smith), summer to fall (Buczacki)
Similar Species
Galerina paludosa has a veil, has spores that are smooth to very slightly punctate to rugulose as revived in KOH, and has cheilocystidia (25)30-44.5 x 6-12 x 3-5 x 3.5-9 microns, that are fusoid-ventricose or subcapitate (6.7-9 microns at apex), or rarely cylindric, (Smith(2)). Galerina sphagnorum is widely distributed in North America and elsewhere, grows in identical habitat and has much the same appearance, but differs microscopically in that cheilocystidia vary around the fusoid-ventricose pattern and in G. tibiicystis they are typically capitate, and in the button stage a rudimentary veil can be demonstrated for G. sphagnorum (which however lacks any appreciable veil remnants when mature).
