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Species Information
Summary: Features include 1) a hygrophanous, butterscotch, striate, viscid cap with margin that is translucent-striate when moist, 2) adnate, crowded, narrow gills that are pale dingy tan then dull dark cinnamon, 3) a butterscotch stem with a fibrillose coating becoming rusty brown from the base up, 4) growth on wood in spring, and 5) a cinnamon brown spore deposit. Opinions still differ on whether Pholiota or Kuehneromyces is the correct generic name. "According to our experience this is the commonest brown-spored agaric on decaying conifer wood during the spring and early summer in the northern Great Lakes Region and the Western United States", (Smith(41)). According to Breitenbach(4), Moser in 1994 reduced Pholiota conica A.H. Sm. & Hesler to a variety Kuehneromyces lignicola var. conicus. The description is derived from Smith(3) except where indicated.
Smith(3) examined collections from WA, OR, ID, CA, QC, AK, CO, MA, ME, MI, MT, NC, NM, NY, OH, TN, UT, VT, and WY. Breitenbach(4) give distribution as North America, Europe, and Asia. Kuehneromyces lignicola is found in BC (Redhead).
Cap: 1-3.5cm across, with conic umbo and inrolled margin when young, becoming obtusely bell-shaped to convex or nearly flat; hygrophanous, pale to dark butterscotch color, fading to "pale yellow to (at times) almost pallid"; viscid, bald, margin often decorated with veil remnants at first, translucent-striate over marginal area when moist
Flesh: thin, fairly pliant; watery pinkish buff to cinnamon buff
Gills: bluntly adnate but seceding, crowded, narrow at 0.15-0.2cm; pale dingy tan then dull dark cinnamon; edges at times becoming crenulate to fimbriate [scalloped to fringed]
Stem: (2)3-6cm x 0.15-0.3(0.5)cm, equal, hollow, pliant; dingy butterscotch color soon stained dull rusty brown from base upwards; "at first covered over all by a fibrillose silky coating grayish to buff in color" and with sparse patches or zones of pale brownish veil remnants below the fleeting ring or ring zone
Veil: cap margin often decorated with veil remnants at first, small patches or zones of pale brownish veil remnants below fleeting ring or ring zone, (Smith), "does not have a ring, but may have a fibrillose ring-zone" (Trudell)
Microscopic spores: spores 5.5-7(7.5) x 3-4(4.5) microns, ovate in face view, elliptic in side view, obscurely truncate, smooth, walls less than 0.5 microns thick, dingy tawny in KOH, scarcely darkening in Melzer''s reagent; basidia 16-20(25) x 5-6(7) microns, typically 4-spored, clavate, colorless in KOH to somewhat ochraceous; pleurocystidia "none or a few seen near gill edge and similar to cheilocystidia", cheilocystidia 24-46 x 4-9 microns, "fusoid-ventricose to subfusoid, neck often elongated and flexuous, apex subacute to obtuse"; clamp connections present, (Smith), germ pore present (Trudell)
Spore deposit: cinnamon brown
Habitat / Range
gregarious to cespitose [in tufts] on wood, usually of conifers but sometimes hardwoods, typically in spring, (Smith), usually in large clusters on logs or snags, typically on conifers in the Pacific Northwest, but can also occur on hardwoods; most often in spring and early summer, "often in the mountains near melting snow", (Trudell)
Similar Species
Kuehneromyces mutabilis is similar but Kuehneromyces lignicola "lacks scales on the stem (or has only a few patches), and does not grow in such large clusters", (Arora). Pholiota conica has a sharply conic cap, less viscid surface, and solid stem, (Scates). Pholiota obscura has stem length 1- 1/12 times cap breadth and broad gills, (Scates).
