Summary:
Features include 1) a hygrophanous, bald cap that is pale date brown to chocolate brown, 2) adnate to sinuate, crowded gills that are pallid, soon tinged incarnate, and finally purple brown from spores, 3) a white stem, 4) growth on the ground or on the bases of stumps and trees of hardwoods (in North America commonly Populus), 5) dark grayish brown to chocolate brown spore deposit, and 6) microscopic characters. The description derived from Smith except where otherwise indicated.

Gills:
adnate to sinuate, crowded, narrow becoming moderately broad; "pallid at first, soon tinged incarnate and finally dark purple-brown from the spores", edges usually white; edges usually floccose, (Smith), pale at first, then reddish brown, mottled, (Schalkwijk-Barendsen)

Stem:
4-8(12)cm x 0.4-1(1.2)cm, equal or widening slightly downward, stuffed becoming hollow, "straight to somewhat curved, somewhat fleshy but rigid and brittle"; white, or when old discoloring to dingy reddish brown at least near base; pruinose in upper part, somewhat silky-striate toward base, base more or less white-mycelioid

Veil:
no veil present

Odor:
not distinctive

Taste:
not distinctive

Microscopic spores:
spores 7-9(10) x 4-5.5 microns, ovate to elliptic to oblong in face view, obscurely inequilateral to somewhat bean-shaped in side view, smooth, germ pore visible only under oil-immersion, in KOH singly nearly colorless with vinaceous tint, on standing the vinaceous tint duller and stronger, spores in small groups pale cocoa-color, in Melzer''s reagent pale tan to pale reddish tawny, wall about 0.2 microns thick; basidia 4-spored, 18-24 x 5-8 microns, clavate, colorless in KOH; pleurocystidia abundant, 36-58(67) x 9-15(18) microns, "broadly fusoid, apex acute to subacute", wall up to 2-3 microns thick in the neck near the apex "and the latter often variously incrusted, otherwise the wall smooth", cheilocystidia "similar to pleurocystidia or broader and shorter", also numerous inflated cells 25-35 x 10-20 microns, "forming an almost sterile band along the edge", their walls colorless to yellowish in KOH and thin to very slightly thickened (0.5 microns) and refractive, contents not distinctive; clamp connections present

Spore deposit:
dark grayish brown to chocolate-brown, (Smith), red-brown (Breitenbach, but illustration of spore deposit color is not very red)

Notes:
Homophron spadiceum has been found at least in WA, OR, ID, CO, KS, MI, MN, NC, NM, NY, VT, WY, and Bavaria. There is a BC collection at the University of British Columbia. It was reported by Schalkwijk-Barendsen from AB. Breitenbach(4) give the distribution as North America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa.

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