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

Summary:
Features include 1) a subviscid cap that is dark brownish gray and radially streaky, 2) adnate to short decurrent gills that are white or slightly grayish, and 3) a dry pale smoky gray-brown stem that is silky or faintly pruinose in its upper part. Hygrophorus camarophyllus is fairly common.

Hesler(1) examined collections of Hygrophorus camarophyllus from BC, WA, OR, ID, ON, MA, ME, MI, NY, WY, France, and Spain. It occurs in CA (Desjardin(6)). It has been found in Europe including Switzerland (Breitenbach(3)).

Cap:
2-7cm across, bluntly convex, sometimes flat or with a slight umbo; brownish gray with fine dark lines; sticky when wet, then dry, smooth with a downy margin, (Phillips), 4-7(13)cm across, obtuse, convex to turbinate [top-shaped], occasionally either flat or with slight umbo; evenly "fuscous" over all; subviscid when wet, soon dry and bald (though appearing streaky), margin pubescent [downy] or pruinose at first, (Hesler), dark sooty brown or dark brown with slight olive tinge, (Ammirati)

Flesh:
thick, fragile; white, (Phillips), thick, fragile; white, pale cinereous [pale ash gray] in stem, (Hesler)

Gills:
"adnate, close to subdistant, moderately broad, very waxy; white or slightly grayish", (Phillips), adnate, becoming short-decurrent, close, sometimes subdistant, moderately broad, thin; white or faintly tinged cinereous [ash-gray], (Hesler) conspicuously interveined, (Ammirati)

Stem:
2.5-13cm x 1-2cm, "pale, smoky gray-brown; silky with fine hairs near the top, smooth and hairless toward base", (Phillips), 3-8(13)cm x 1-2cm, equal or narrowing downward, solid; pallid fuscous or colored as cap, color stopping abruptly at line of gill attachment; dry over all, appressed silky or faintly pruinose in upper part, nearly bald toward base, (Hesler), flushed with the gray-brown color of the cap, but paler, sometimes streaked or spotted with gray-brown fibrils, (Ammirati)

Odor:
"slight, faintly of coal tar", (Phillips), "very slight, reminding one of coal tar", (Hesler), without special odor (Ammirati), indistinct (Largent)

Taste:
mild (Phillips, Hesler)

Microscopic spores:
spores 7-9 x 4-5 microns, elliptic, [presumably smooth, inamyloid], (Phillips), spores 7-9 x 4-5 microns, elliptic to subelliptic or drop-shaped, smooth, inamyloid; basidia 2-spored and 4-spored, 44-50 x 7-8 microns; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia none; gill trama divergent; clamp connections on cuticular hyphae, (Hesler)

Spore deposit:
white (Phillips)