Summary:
Features include 1) a whitish to pale yellowish or dingy ochraceous cap with grayish brown scales or innate fibrils, 2) close to crowded, narrow, white gills that become dark purplish brown with white floccose edges, 3) growth in tufts around stumps or logs of hardwoods, and 4) microscopic characters. Fruiting bodies with fiery orange-brown caps are sometimes described as a separate species, Psathyrella pyrotricha. Smith distinguishes P. lacrymabunda from Psathyrella velutina by the smooth spores of the former, but Bessette(2) for instance lists P. velutina with smooth spores. The description is derived from Smith for var. lacrymabunda.

Cap:
(3)4-8(10)cm across, obtuse to convex, becoming bell-shaped and finally flat; whitish to pale yellowish or dingy ochraceous with grayish brown scales or innate fibrils; disc bald at times

Flesh:
rather thick; white

Gills:
adnate-seceding, close to crowded, narrow; white becoming dark purplish brown, edges white; edges floccose, in humid weather sometimes beaded with droplets of moisture (not a unique feature)

Stem:
6-8(12)cm x (0.6)1-1.5cm, equal, hollow; white; surface at first sheathed by remnants of fibrillose veil up to evanescent ring zone, silky near top, becoming sordid when old and sometimes staining yellowish

Veil:
fibrillose universal veil leaves remnants up to evanescent ring zone

Odor:
fungoid

Taste:
fungoid

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-7.5 x 3.2-4 microns, elliptic to oblong in face view, elliptic to slightly bean-shaped in side view, smooth, apex with minute germ pore and base often more or less truncate, in KOH soon pale to medium chocolate color becoming dark chocolate color finally, in Melzer''s reagent pale to medium reddish tan, wall about 0.2 microns thick; basidia 4-spored, 20-29 x 7-8 microns, colorless in KOH, subclavate; pleurocystidia abundant, 32-46 x 10-14(16) microns, "fusoid-ventricose to utriform, thin-walled, smooth", wall colorless in KOH, "content as mounted in KOH dull brownish in many" and in Melzer''s reagent "in old specimens some of them amyloid", in younger specimens the content colorless to dingy violaceous-brown in a few, cheilocystidia "similar to pleurocystidia only a larger number fusoid-ventricose"; clamp connections present

Spore deposit:
[presumably dark purplish brown]

Notes:
Collections of L. lacrymabunda var. lacrymabunda were examined from MI and VA, and it also has been reported from reported from WA, IL, MD, MI, MO, NC, NY, PA, and Europe, (Smith(5)). There is a collection from WA at the University of Washington. Desjardin(6) illustrates it from CA. Breitenbach(4) give the distribution as America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa. There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia (as P. velutina) and it was reported from BC by Davidson(1) (as Hypholoma velutinum) and Lowe(1) (as P. velutina). If we accept the synonymy of L. velutina then the range is extended to OR, ID, CA, IL, KS, MD, MI, MN, NJ, NM, NY, OH, PA, and TN, (Smith), and WA, ID, ON, AK, IA, and MI, (collections at the University of Washington).

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Psathyrella lacrymabunda (Fr.) M.M. Moser
Psathyrella pyrotricha (Holmsk.) M.M. Moser