Summary:
Galerina perplexa is distinctive by way of its pale fulvous cap, its conspicuously darkening stem, medium sized spores on 4-spored basidia, and almost seta-like pileocystidia. Other features include a hygrophanous striate cap, pale pinkish buff gills that become clay color; a stem that is pruinose on its upper part and pruinose to bald on its lower part, and a pungent-subnauseous odor. The description is derived from Smith(2).

Gills:
narrowly adnate, close to subdistant, narrow to broad; pale pinkish buff becoming clay color or nearly so; edges fringed under hand lens

Stem:
3-6cm x 0.05-0.2cm, may be short and thick or long and slender, equal, basal third gradually dark reddish brown to purplish umber-brown, or finally blackish brown, upper colored more or less as gills (pinkish buff to clay color); upper half pruinose from caulocystidia, lower half pruinose to bald, base slightly mycelioid

Odor:
pungent-subnauseous when crushed

Taste:
like raw Morchella esculenta

Microscopic spores:
spores (7)8-11 x 5-6.5 microns, ovate in face view, broadly inequilateral in side view, warty-wrinkled except for smooth plage, "pale ochraceous tawny to ochraceous tawny in KOH, deep red-brown in Melzer''s reagent"; basidia 4-spored; pleurocystidia scattered, (45)50-75 x (8)9-12 x 4-5 x 3-4 microns, tops subacute, thin-walled, colorless in KOH, cheilocystidia "similar to pleurocystidia in shape but usually smaller", pileocystidia about 80 x 8 x 4 x 2.5 microns (almost seta-like without greatly inflated basal part), "flexuous and tapered to an acute apex from a narrowly inflated base", colorless; caulocystidia present; clamp connections present

Spore deposit:
[presumably a shade of brown]

Notes:
Galerina perplexa has been found at least in ID, CO, CA, and MI, (Smith(2)). There are BC collections by O. Ceska at the University of British Columbia.

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