E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia

Summary:
Salient features are a coconut odor (usually), fragile consistency, a gray to pinkish gray cap, and cream-colored spore deposit, (Hesler(4)). Other features include a dry cap, white unchanging milk, decurrent, crowded narrow gills that are pinkish buff to pinkish cinnamon or lilac gray, a dry stem colored as the cap or paler, and microscopic characters. A taxon that is genetically close (6 base pairs) but not identical has been found in Alaska and northern British Columbia (D. Miller, pers. comm.)

It has been reported from BC (Goward & Hickson in Redhead(5)). There are collections from BC and NB at the University of British Columbia, and collections from WA, ID, AK, and MI at the University of Washington. It is cited by Hesler(4) from ID, also NS, ON, QC, AK, CO, MA, ME, MI, MN, WI, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.

Cap:
2-6(9)cm across, convex with an inrolled margin, becoming depressed at the cap center then shallowly funnel-shaped, sometimes subpapillate; gray to pinkish gray [also referred to in this source as vinaceous-gray and as "pale vinaceous gray to whitish"], "azonate to obscurely zonate with indistinct narrow zones"; dry, appressed-fibrillose, when old at times slightly squamulose, (Hesler), vinaceous gray to vinaceous buff (Methven), "lilac gray to dull buff, occasionally with faint concentric bands of color; dry and faintly hairy, sometimes slightly scaly in age", (Phillips), pale vinaceous gray to pale lilac-gray or whitish (Bessette), grayish pruinose micaceous on a lilaceous pinkish beige background (Courtecuisse)

Flesh:
thin; pale buff, (Hesler), white, usually abundant, (Trudell), MILK white, unchanging, not staining, (Hesler)

Gills:
subdecurrent to decurrent, close to crowded, narrow (0.3-0.4cm broad), interveined, some forking; pinkish buff to "light pinkish cinnamon" [Ridgway(1) color] becoming only slightly darker when old (incarnate-cinnamon), (Hesler), decurrent, crowded, narrow, some forking; yellowish to pale flesh-buff then lilac gray (Phillips)

Stem:
2-5(10)cm x 1-1.5cm, more or less equal; colored as cap or paler; dry, appressed fibrillose-pruinose to practically bald, (Hesler), "soft, fragile; same color as cap or paler; dry, faintly downy or almost smooth", (Phillips)

Veil:
[none]

Odor:
fragrant (of coconut) when fresh, (Hesler), fragrant, reminiscent of coconut, (Phillips), of coconut, or coconut cake, (Courtecuisse)

Taste:
slowly, slightly peppery (Hesler)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-8 x 5-6 microns or 7-9(10) x 5.5-7 microns, "ornamentation mostly as crooked bands and lines with some free warts but not forming more than a broken reticulum", prominences 0.5-0.8 microns high; basidia 4-spored, 8-11 microns wide; pleurocystidia: macrocystidia scattered to rare, 38-56 x 8-12 microns, not prominently projecting, "subcylindric with obtuse apex, content spangled to homogeneous", cheilocystidia similar to macrocystidia but often shorter; cap cuticle "a rather interrupted layer of interwoven hyphae having some cells considerably enlarged" (up to 15-20 microns) when old, "when young a loosely organized cutis of tubular narrow hyphae, end cells of cuticular hyphae not markedly differentiated", "incrustations numerous on hyphae at base of cuticle", (Hesler), spores 6.5-8.5 x 5-7 microns (Phillips)

Spore deposit:
pale cream to +/- pinkish buff (Hesler), pale cream to buff (Phillips)