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Species Information
Summary: Distinctive characters are the robust fruiting body, the streaked dark gray cap that is paler at the center, flesh that is water-soaked whitish to gray, gills that are waxy and gray, and the occurrence near melting snowbanks. Other features include a moist or slightly viscid striate cap, and a moist to dry stem that is white at the top or bottom and tinted gray elsewhere.
The distribution includes WA, OR, ID, AZ, CA, and MT, (Bessette(1)). There is a collection from BC at the University of British Columbia. It is also found in Europe including Austria and Switzerland (Hesler).
Cap: 4-7cm across, convex, expanding; whitish disc, gray marginal part; viscid, radially streaked; margin even, (Hesler), 3-10cm across, "at first convex, soon becoming flat and depressed, irregularly humped, with margin expanded, wavy-lobate"; fairly dark gray, sometimes with ochraceous shading, becoming speckled blackish gray when old; initially moist, soon becoming dry, (Lincoff), 2.5-11cm across, broadly convex; light to pale gray-brown over disc, "margin darker brown to blackish gray"; "viscid to waxy subviscid with a sheen", bald, margin sulcate to sulcate-striate when old, (Bessette)
Flesh: watery-pallid and gray-punctate, (Hesler), thick; white, faintly gray beneath cap surface, (Lincoff), conspicuously water-soaked beneath cap surface, "remainder tinted gray with water-soaked sheen", in stem dull white with a sheen, (Bessette)
Gills: adnate to adnexed, distant, broad; gray, unchanging, (Hesler), becoming arcuate-decurrent, interveined, branching; "white tending to turn gray or blackish", (Lincoff), adnate to adnexed, distant, with 2 tiers of subgills, broad; white soon gray to bluish gray, unchanging or darkening slightly when old, (Bessette)
Stem: 5-7cm x 0.8-1.2cm, gray in upper part, pallid in lower part; moist, not viscid, (Hesler), 4-8cm x 1.2-3cm, squat, cylindric, straight or curved, or narrowed at base, solid; "white at top, otherwise silvery gray"; furfuraceous, (Lincoff), 3-10cm x 1-2.5cm, equal or narrowing somewhat toward base; white tinted gray over upper half; dry, at top with a few tufts of fibrils, bald in lower part, (Bessette)
Odor: none (Hesler, Bessette)
Taste: none (Hesler), mild (Bessette)
Microscopic spores: spores 7-8.5 x 4.5-5 microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid; basidia mostly 4-spored, a few 2-spored, 48-69 x (6)7-9 microns; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia absent; gill trama divergent, hyphae 5-9 microns broad; cap cuticle a narrow (60-85 microns) gelatinous zone of repent hyphae, an ixocutis; cap trama of radially disposed hyphae; clamp connections present on cuticular hyphae, (Hesler), spores 7-9.5 x 5.5-6.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, (Lincoff), spores 6.5-8.5 x 4.5-5 microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, thin-walled; basidia 4-spored, occasionally 2-spored, 42-55 x 5.4-8.1 microns, narrowly clavate, colorless; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia absent, gill tissue divergent, (Bessette)
Spore deposit: white (Lincoff, Bessette)
Habitat / Range
a collection on soil near snow bank, June, (Hesler), gregarious "beneath litter of leaves and moss in coniferous and broadleaf woods", especially in mountain areas, late winter, spring, rarely in late fall, (Lincoff), single to several, sometimes cespitose [in tufts] "under conifers (very often subalpine fir and Engelmann spruce) in needle duff, usually in the wet zone at high elevations, often in melting snowbanks", late May to July, (Bessette), spring, summer
Similar Species
Hygrophorus camarophyllus 1) is darker from the first, 2) has close to subdistant gills that stay white (may be faintly tinged cinereous), 3) has somewhat longer spores, and 4) fruits in fall, (Hesler). Hygrophorus calophyllus has pale pink gills, (Miller).
