Summary:
Features include a reddish-brown to yellow-brown cap with a contrasting pale margin, waxy decurrent gills, a dry white stem, and almond odor. Hygrophorus bakerensis is fairly common in the Pacific Northwest. It is possible that this is a synonym of Hygrophorus variicolor (the glutinous stem of the latter may prove not to be significant).

Cap:
4-15cm across, obtuse to convex becoming broadly convex or flat; cinnamon brown to yellow-brown or tawny, margin usually paler or whitish; slimy or viscid when moist, smooth, (Arora), 4-15cm across, obtuse when young, the margin incurved at first becoming flat or uplifted; disc some shade of yellow-brown, paler toward margin (disc "sudan brown" shading to "tawny-olive" or "amber brown" shading to "cinnamon-buff" toward the whitish margin); glutinous when wet, merely viscid when old, appressed-fibrillose fibers below the gluten, margin cottony, (Hesler)

Flesh:
thick; white, (Arora), thick 1cm near stem) tapering evenly to margin, firm; white, unchanging when cut or bruised, (Hesler)

Gills:
"usually decurrent but varying to adnate", "soft, somewhat waxy"; white to creamy or pinkish buff; sometimes beaded with droplets in warm weather, (Arora), decurrent or soon becoming so, close to subdistant (56-88 reaching stem), 2-3 tiers of subgills, gills narrow but becoming broad in large caps (0.8-1.2cm broad); creamy white, unchanging; edges even, (Hesler)

Stem:
4-15cm x 0.8-2.5cm, equal or narrowing downward, solid; white to pinkish buff; dry, smooth, sometimes beaded with droplets in warm weather, (Arora), (4)7-14cm x 0.8-2.5cm at top, equal or narrowing downward, solid; white or pale pinkish buff; dry, cottony pruinose at top when young, merely unpolished overall when old, not staining when bruised, often beaded with clear drops in moist weather, (Hesler)

Veil:
absent (Arora)

Odor:
"sweet but sometimes faint, like almond extract or crushed peach pits", (Arora), "heavy but fragrant and very characteristic, reminding one somewhat of almonds", odor easily missed if one has just a few fruiting bodies, but in large collections very distinct, (Hesler)

Taste:
mild (Hesler)

Microscopic spores:
spores 7.5-10 x 4.5-6 microns, elliptic, smooth; gill tissue divergent, (Arora), spores 7-9(10) x 4.5-5(6) microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored, 40-54 x 6-8 microns; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia absent; gill tissue divergent; clamp connections present in cap cuticle and gill trama, (Hesler)

Spore deposit:
white (Arora)

Notes:
Hesler(1) examined collections from WA, OR, and ID. There are collections from BC at the Pacific Forestry Centre and the University of British Columbia. It occurs in CA (Desjardin). It is included by Bessette(2) for northeastern North America, and Barron says it has been recorded in ON, eastern Canada and the adjacent US.

EDIBILITY

bland (does not taste the way it smells), (Arora)