E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia

Summary:
Also listed in Morels etc. category. Features include a cup-shaped fruiting body with a dark brown to gray upper surface; a light to medium brown or gray-brown, densely downy undersurface, sometimes with olivaceous tints; a light to medium gray-brown densely downy stem that is round in cross-section or fluted over its lower half; and microscopic characters including spindle-shaped spores each with three droplets.

Collections were examined from BC, WA, ID, and also AB, MB, ON, PQ, AK, MA, MI, NJ, NY, WI, and Japan, and it has been reported from southern North America, Central America, Caribbean, Europe, and Asia, (Abbott). It is also recorded from AZ and CO, (Larsen), and CA (Arora).

Upper surface:
0.5-3.5cm across, 0.4-1.2cm high, deeply cup-shaped, expanding to shallowly cup-shaped or disc-shaped when old, often laterally compressed at first, margin inrolled at first; spore-bearing upper surface dark brown (fresh and dried), smooth, (Abbott), 1.5-3cm across, saucer-shaped, rarely becoming somewhat saddle-shaped when old; gray to gray-brown; smooth; margin felty-hairy, (Breitenbach), 0.8-3(6)cm across, sometimes closed when young, but soon opening to shallow cup-shaped, rarely becoming flat when old, margin at first incurved; upper surface usually gray to grayish brown, varying to grayish tan or grayish olive or grayish buff, smooth, (Arora), brownish gray (Phillips)

Flesh:
thin (Arora)

Underside:
light to medium brown or gray-brown, sometimes with olivaceous tints; densely pubescent [densely downy] to villose, (Abbott), same color as upper surface or lighter; "distinctly felty-hairy (felt consisting of tiny tufts of hair)", (Breitenbach), colored like upper surface or slightly paler or grayer; hairy or minutely fibrillose-scaly or dandruffy, (Arora), appearing pale gray due to dense covering of tufted downy hairs (Phillips)

Stem:
0.4-6cm x 0.1-0.9cm when fresh, equal or widened at base, tip typically tapered, "terete or fluted over basal half, terete to slightly sulcate and internally solid"; light to medium gray-brown; densely pubescent to villose, (Abbott), 2-5cm long, cylindric, thickened somewhat toward base, solid; the same color as underside of cap; felty-hairy, (Breitenbach), 1-5(7)cm x 0.2-0.5cm, equal or often widened at base, round or flattened but not chambered in cross-section, "not ribbed but sometimes with wrinkles or pits at the base"; "colored like the exterior of cup above and hairy or scaly-dandruffy, usually paler or whitish at the base", (Arora), gray, paler in lower part, (Phillips)

Microscopic:
spores 18-25.1 x 10.3-12.2 microns, subfusoid, smooth to verruculose, colorless, with 3 droplets or infrequently with 1 droplet; asci 175-250 x 14-18 microns; paraphyses 5-9.6 microns at tip, clavate, enlarged gradually to abruptly at tip, "pale brown to brown in mass, contents finely granular", (Abbott), spores (19.5)20-27(31) x (9.5)10-12 microns, fusiform-elliptic, colorless, usually finely punctate, more rarely smooth, sometimes with coarse round warts when young, spores with one large and usually 1-2 smaller drops in each end; asci 8-spored, 220-350 x 15-20 microns, not turning blue in iodine; paraphyses cylindric and thickened on tips "to 9-12(7) microns" [sic]; with chains of oval cells projecting from exterior as hairs, (Breitenbach), spores (18)20-25 x 10-12.5 microns, "more or less spindle-shaped, finely roughened or smooth, with one large oil droplet and a smaller one at each end", (Arora), spores 20-30 x 10-12 microns (Phillips)