Summary: Features include small size, a viscid red cap, decurrent gills that are white or ochraceous, a thin yellow stem, and inamyloid smooth spores that are slipper-shaped to cylindric to sausage-shaped and more or less constricted. The online Species Fungorum gives the current name as Hygrocybe subminiata Murrill [as ''Hydrocybe''], Mycologia 3(4): 198 (1911).
Gills: decurrent, subdistant, medium broad to narrow; whitish to ochraceous, (Hesler), decurrent, white or tinged yellowish buff, (Stuntz)
Stem: 3cm long and 0.2cm wide, slightly enlarged in upper part, round in cross-section, crooked; luteous; bald, (Hesler), 2.5-4cm x 0.15-0.3cm, yellow, (Stuntz)
Veil: [presumably absent]
Microscopic spores: spores 7-9 x 3.5-5 microns, subcylindric [somewhat cylindric] to more or less allantoid [curved sausage-shaped], at times slipper-shaped, more or less constricted, ends blunt, spores smooth, inamyloid; basidia 2-spored, 26-37 x 6-8 microns; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia none; gill trama subparallel; cap cuticle a narrow gelatinous zone, 20-40 microns thick, "the hyphae repent, an ixocutis, or at times more or less erect"; no hypodermium differentiated; cap trama of radial hyphae; clamp connections present on cuticular hyphae, (Hesler)
Spore deposit: [presumably white]
Notes: Hesler(1) examined Hygrophorus subminiatus (Murrill) Murrill from WA, MI, NC, and Jamaica. There is a collection from BC at the University of British Columbia.
EDIBILITY
Habitat and Range
SIMILAR SPECIES
Hygrocybe minutula has a slimy cap and yellow gills. Hygrocybe ''miniata'' has a dry cap, adnate gills, and non-constricted spores.
Habitat
on soil, July to September, (Hesler), summer, fall