Summary:
Distinctive characters are an arachnoid (web-like) more or less fleeting veil, interwoven cap tissue, and the lack of pleurocystidia, (Hesler). Other features include a convex, pale yellow or buff, non-viscid, radially streaky cap, adnate to slightly decurrent gills that are ochraceous at maturity, a fibrillose stem colored as the cap, and growth in tufts about the base of trees. The description is derived from Hesler(2).

Cap:
10-15cm across, broadly convex; pale yellow or buff; not viscid, fibrillose and somewhat virgate [radially streaky], the margin commonly becoming rolled up when old

Flesh:
soft; whitish or yellowish, yellowish in stem

Gills:
adnate or slightly decurrent, close, about 0.6cm broad, often crisped and wavy toward stem; ochraceous at maturity (probably yellow when young)

Stem:
7.5-10cm x 1.6-2.4cm, equal or widened toward base, solid; colored as cap; fibrillose

Veil:
arachnoid (cobwebby), fleeting

Microscopic spores:
spores 7.5-10 x 5.5-7 microns, elliptic in face view, inequilateral or subamygdaliform [somewhat almond-shaped] in side view, "rough-warty, no germ pore, ferruginous in KOH, dextrinoid"; basidia (2-)4-spored, 27-38 x 6-7 microns, sometimes brown; pleurocystidia none, cheilocystidia 26-37 x 7-10 microns, "ventricose, usually with a neck and capitate, sometimes brown"; gill trama subparallel, hyphae 5-11 microns wide; cap trama interwoven, cuticle repent; cap and gill trama yellowish brown in KOH, reddish brown in Melzer''s, yellow pigment, soluble in KOH, present in gill trama; clamp connections present

Spore deposit:
[presumably somewhere from orange to rusty brown]

Notes:
Gymnopilus magnus has been found at least in BC, WA, and NY, (Hesler).

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