Summary:
Features include 1) the turquoise reaction of fresh flesh to PDAB (the most dependable way of confirming the identity of this species), 2) a fulvous-colored cap with a paler margin (often subtly bicolored), 3) a pallid to buff or pale yellow stem that is pruinose only at the top if at all, 4) a somewhat enlarged stem base which may be white-mycelioid, 5) a fleeting pallid cortina, 6) growth in fall under conifers or Arbutus, and 7) smooth spores some of which are swaybacked or kidney shaped in profile, 8) pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia, and caulocystidia that are absent from the lower part of the stem. The description is derived from Matheny(10).

Cap:
1-5cm across, conic to parabolic to obtusely conic or campanulate [bell-shaped], umbo absent "or with a distinct or prominent obtuse umbo often by early age", margin downcurved or deeply downcurved, "edge slightly inrolled when very young", remaining so when old "but straight and undulating at times", "occasionally with appendiculate veil material when young"; subhygrophanous, typically fulvous or tawny at the center and buff or isabelline toward the margin, these colors changing slightly as the cap dries; in more detail, disk fulvous or "buckthorn brown" or strong brown to brownish yellow, "usually darker than the margin except when young", at times with a pallid or pale brown velipellis that imparts a light gray to pale brown color, the margin "chamois", "honey yellow", or "isabella color" or light olive brown, light yellowish brown, to pale yellow, "often bicolorous but this not always evident", center may fade from fulvous to brownish yellow with the margin fading from light olive brown to light yellowish brown, eventually the center and margin may fade to pale yellow with shades of light olive brown at the edge of the margin; "dry or slightly lubricous or soapy when moist, not viscid, shiny", at center bald to more or less bald toward the margin when young (exceptionally minutely scaly), finely fibrillose when old, "fibrils weakly diverging, usually not rimose or at most rimulose in age"

Flesh:
up to 0.5cm thick under the disk, not confluent with the stem flesh; "white or pallid, unchanging where bruised or cut"; in stem "solid, pale grayish in areas"

Gills:
narrowly adnate, seceding when old, rounded toward the stem, ventricose, up to 0.4cm broad, close, about 40 reaching stem, several tiers of subgills; grayish brown when young to pale brown, becoming yellowish brown or light olive brown to dark yellowish brown, "Dresden brown" or olive brown when old, edges pallid; edges fimbriate [fringed]

Stem:
2.5-8cm x 0.4-0.7cm at top, up to 1cm wide at widest point, round in cross section, rarely compressed, "enlarged or slightly bulbous at the base but not marginate"; in upper part pallid with isabelline or "chamois" undertone "or streaks beneath a spreading white fibrillose vesture", developing pale yellow undertones more evident when old, "at extreme base pallid"; "pruinose under a hand lens, if at all, or at the extreme apex or upper one-sixth to one-eighth, in some collections not obviously pruinose at apex, elsewhere fibrillose to scurfy-fibrillose or glabrescent below", "the fibrillose layer at times forming a pallid vesture, with lower part usually densely covered with white patches of mycelium, rarely browning"

Veil:
cortina pallid and fugacious [fleeting]

Odor:
spermatic to weakly spermatic

Taste:
not remarkable

Microscopic spores:
spores 7.0-10.0(11.5) x (4.0)4.5-5.5(6.0) microns, amygdaliform [almond-shaped] to subamygdaliform [somewhat almond-shaped] with bluntly pointed or conic apices, "some noticeably swaybacked or near reniform in side view, apiculus distinct; basidia 4-spored, 25-31 x 7-8 microns, clavate to cylindricoclavate, colorless; pleurocystidia 50-68 x 10-14 microns, fusiform, apices occasionally encrusted with crystals at apex, thick-walled, walls 1-2.5cm thick, colorless, cheilocystidia "similar to pleurocystidia but usually shorter and/or thin-walled, mixed with clavate paracystidia; clamp connections present

Spore deposit:
yellowish brown to dark yellowish brown

Notes:
Collections were examined from BC, WA, OR, mainly on the west side of the Cascade divide, (Matheny(10)).

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