Summary:
Features include 1) a dry cap that is pinky-brown lilac at first then dull greenish with a bluish green bloom, or green blue and yellow mixed, 2) greenish yellow flesh, 3) adnate to sinuate gills that are olive-yellow becoming tan dotted with yellow or rusty-red stains when old and finally cinnamon, 4) a striate, cap-colored stem that may have lilac mycelium at the base, 5) a bitter taste, 6) growth on rich humus and coniferous wood, and 7) a brownish rust spore deposit. Cap and stem colors fade quickly after picking, but dried fruiting bodies may retain blue-green to green tints.

Cap:
2.5-10cm across, "convex becoming flatter with an inrolled margin; buttons pinky-brown lilac then dull greenish or bluish green, blue and yellow mixed"; dry, slightly hairy or scaly around disc, becoming smooth when old, (Phillips), 2.5-10cm across, convex to nearly flat, margin involute [inrolled]; buttons lilac-vinaceous, then dull green with a bluish green bloom, "or variable, green, blue and yellow mixed", dried caps olivaceous to near "Isabella color"; dry, often fibrillose and squamulose [finely scaly] around the disc, becoming bald when old, (Hesler), 2.5-10cm across, convex to nearly flat, margin incurved when young and often remaining so when old, often wavy at maturity; "dull purple-red with bluish green to greenish yellow, olive or brown tones"; "dry, often fibrillose over the disc when young", becoming smooth with age, (Bessette)

Flesh:
thin at the margin; greenish yellow, in stem staining brownish yellow or olive-ocher within, (Hesler), thin at the edge; greenish yellow, (Phillips), moderately thick, firm; greenish-yellow, (Bessette)

Gills:
adnate to sinuate, close to subdistant, broad; olive-yellow when young, becoming dotted with yellow or rusty-red stains when old, particularly at the edges, (Phillips), adnate or sinuate to deeply emarginate, close to subdistant, broad; ''"yellowish olive" when young, becoming "Isabella", dotted with yellow or ferruginous stains, finally cinnamon''; "edges often stained yellowish tawny or ferruginous", (Hesler), attached to sinuate when young, often deeply emarginate when old, close, broad, with numerous subgills; "yellowish olive when young, becoming pinkish cinnamon at maturity", (Bessette)

Stem:
10-15cm x 0.5-1cm, stuffed then hollow, wavy; colored as cap; lined, (Phillips), (2.5)10-15cm x 0.5-1(1.4)cm, flexuous [wavy], stuffed then hollow; colored as cap; striate, (Hesler), 4-14cm x 0.7-2cm, nearly equal, or sometimes enlarged near top or base, becoming hollow when old; same color as cap; with fine streaks, (Bessette), may have lilac mycelium at base (Paul Kroeger, pers. comm.)

Veil:
none (Hesler)

Odor:
"pleasant, not distinctive", (Phillips), "agreeable or not distinctive" (Hesler), not distinctive (Bessette)

Taste:
very bitter (Hesler, Phillips), bitter (Bessette)

Microscopic spores:
spores 4-5.5(6.5) x 3.5-4(5) microns, oval or suboval or short-elliptic in face view, slightly inequilateral in side view, verruculose [finely warty] to somewhat asperulate [roughened with tiny points], no germ pore, dextrinoid; basidia 4-spored, 27-34 x 5-7 microns; pleurocystidia 27-43 x 3-5 microns, "slender-ventricose, colorless, capitate", basidioles 23-30 x 3-5 microns, clavate, brown, cheilocystidia 20-30 x 3-4 microns, "ventricose, capitate, more rarely filiform"; gill trama subparallel, hyphae 4-8 microns wide; cap trama radial, cap cuticle "a repent zone of brown hyphae, bearing a turf of slender, erect, filamentous to subventricose, capitate pileocystidia" measuring 36-57 x 1.5-3 microns; caulocystidia 18-42 x 4-7 microns, "flask-shaped, or ventricose, neck often slender, capitate or more commonly non-capitate, forming a turf"; clamp connections present, (Hesler)

Spore deposit:
brownish rust (Phillips), reddish yellow (Bessette)

Notes:
It has been found at least in WA, OR, ID, CA, and WY, (Hesler), and MA, MI, and NM, (Bessette). There are collections from BC at the Pacific Forestry Centre and the University of British Columbia.

EDIBILITY

no (Phillips)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Flammula punctifolia (Peck) A.H. Sm.