Summary:
Features include 1) a viscid cap that is buff to brownish and flushed vinaceous and becomes fibrillose-streaked, 2) decurrent, distant, broad gills that are whitish but when old become flushed cap color, 3) a dry white stem that may become flushed with cap color, 4) an odor of cherry pits or bitter almonds, and 5) microscopic characters including large spores and large basidia. Moreau(1) produced a DNA tree showing this species (paratype from ID, another from BC) in a clade with a Swedish collection of Hygrophorus secretanii. If they are synonymous, the latter would be the valid name. The description is derived from Hesler(1).
Hesler(1) examined collections from ID, NS, and QC. There are collections from WA and OR at the University of Washington and from BC and NB at the University of British Columbia.
Cap:
2-5cm across, broadly convex with incurved margin, becoming flat or slightly depressed, margin often irregular when old; cinnamon-buff on disc and flushed vinaceous red, when old with salmon to vinaceous tones [cap is also referred to as buff to brownish, flushed vinaceous]; fibrillose-streaked when old, viscid but soon dry
Flesh:
thick, firm; buffy white, unchanging
Gills:
decurrent, distant, broad, thickish, "many forked halfway to margin"; whitish but when old becoming flushed with cap color but paler, near "pinkish buff" [Ridgway(1) color]; "interveined (almost poroid or lacunose at times)"
Stem:
3-6cm x 0.3-2.5cm at top, equal or narrowing downward; white at first, may be flushed with color of cap when old, "not darkening to more than pale salmon-buff around wormholes"; dry
Veil:
absent
Odor:
of cherry pits or bitter almonds, lacking in one collection
Microscopic spores:
spores 10-14 x 5.5-7.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored, 56-82 x 7-11 microns; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia absent; gill tissue divergent; clamp connections on cuticular and gill trama hyphae
Spore deposit:
[presumably white]
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