Summary:
Features include 1) a tawny to yellowish, non-viscid, often appendiculate cap, 2) pallid gills that become dingy olive or olive-gray before turning purple brown from spores, 3) a long, yellowish to brownish stem with white fibrillose bands, 4) mild to bitter taste, 5) widely scattered to gregarious or single fruiting in humus and debris under conifers, and 6) dark spores. Var. idahoense differs from the typical variety in its paler colors of gills and top of stem, very bitter taste, cespitose [tufted] habit, and slender cheilocystidia (30-36 x 4-6 microns), (Smith(25)). Var. flavifolium "appears to be intermediate between N. dispersum and N. fasciculare, but the mild taste, slightly larger spores, and lack of green in the gills indicates a closer similarity to the former" (Smith(25), Latin names italicized). Smith''s description used below is for var. dispersum, which he says is common in the Pacific Northwest, but Arora''s description is not given as specific to variety. Hypholoma dispersum is considered by some authors a synonym of Hypholoma marginatum (Pers.: Fr.) Schroeter.

Cap:
1-4cm across, bell-shaped, but sometimes expanding to convex or even flat with an umbo; "tawny to tawny-orange, fading to yellowish"; smooth, non-viscid, margin often hung with veil remnants, (Arora), 1-3.5(4)cm across, conic to convex, broadly umbonate when old; variable color, only subhygrophanous [somewhat hygrophanous], orange-tawny to tawny at first, becoming yellowish to sordid olivaceous toward margin, fading slowly to sordid yellow or buff; lubricous when moist, bald on disc and faintly silky near appendiculate margin, not striate, (Smith)

Flesh:
thin (Arora, Smith)

Gills:
"usually adnate, but sometimes seceding, close"; "pallid, becoming dingy olive or olive-gray, then finally purple-brown with paler edges", (Arora), adnate, close, broad; white to whitish at first, becoming sordid olive and finally purplish brown, with whitish edges, (Smith)

Stem:
6-12cm x 0.2-0.5cm, "equal, usually long and slender, rather tough and pliant but sometimes also brittle"; yellowish in upper part, brown to dark reddish brown in lower part, (Arora), 6-10cm x 0.2-0.5cm, equal above slightly enlarged base; brittle to tough and pliant (in large fruitbodies); lower part dark reddish brown to bister beneath the fibrils, upper part pale and yellowish; covered by a dense silky-fibrillose layer to near the pruinose top, "at times with faint fibrillose patches or subannular fibrillose zones over lower portion", base more or less strigose [coarsely hairy], (Smith)

Veil:
fibrillose or cobwebby, evanescent [fleeting] or leaving fibrillose zone on upper stem, (Arora)

Odor:
none (Smith, Miller), pleasant (Phillips)

Taste:
typically somewhat bitter, (Arora), mild to slightly unpleasant (Smith for var. dispersum, bitter for var. idahoense), bitter and unpleasant, (Miller)

Microscopic spores:
spores 7-10 x 4-5 microns, elliptic, smooth, chrysocystidia present on gill faces, (Arora), spores 7-9(10.5) x 4-5 microns, elliptic, smooth, with germ pore, dull tawny brown revived in KOH; basidia 4-spored, 18-24 x 6-7 microns; pleurocystidia abundant, 32-48(60) x 8-12(15) microns, mucronate, the enlarged part with highly refractive content, cheilocystidia abundant, 18-22(34) x 6-9 microns, fusoid-ventricose to subcylindric, colorless, content homogeneous, apex rounded, (Smith)

Spore deposit:
purple brown (Arora)

Notes:
Smith(25) examined collections of H. dispersum var. dispersum from WA, OR, CA, and MI, var. idahoense from ID, and var. flavifolium from ON, MI, and NY. Hypholoma dispersum has also reported been reported from BC (Redhead(5)) and NL (Redhead(6)). There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia.

EDIBILITY

unknown (Arora)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Naematoloma dispersum (Fr.) P. Karst.