Summary:
Diagnostic features are 1) a dry cap with yellow-brown to reddish brown scales and a smooth, darker center on a whitish background (but with a less distinct "eye" than in Lepiota magnispora), 2) a ragged or shaggy appearance of the cap margin and stem, 3) free whitish gills, 4) the absence of a distinct ring, 5) a white spore deposit, and 6) microscopic characters. Lepiota clypeolaria may represent a complex. There is frequent confusion with Lepiota magnispora = Lepiota ventriosospora according to Vellinga(1): the illustrations in Arora(1) and Lincoff(2) for L. clypeolaria are of L. magnispora. Vellinga(1) says both L. clypeolaria and L. magnispora occur throughout the United States but L. magnispora is the more common of the two. L. magnispora is more common in the west and L. clypeolaria in the east [of the United States], (Vellinga(11)).

Cap:
3.5-8cm across, hemispheric - bell-shaped then conic - bell-shaped, eventually broadly conic with obtuse umbo; center ocher-brown to reddish brown, toward the margin the cuticle splitting to form concentric, erect, fine, ocher-brown squamules [scales], cream-colored between the scales; center smooth to scurfy, marginal zone fibrillose, "margin floccose when young, striate and split when old", cuticle peelable to center, (Breitenbach)

Flesh:
thin; whitish to white; stem cortex weakly yellowing, browning in the stem base, (Breitenbach)

Gills:
free, 45-58 reaching stem, broad, 1-3 subgills between neighboring gills; "hygrophanous, gray-white when moist, white when dry"; "edges slightly crenate-floccose", (Breitenbach)

Stem:
5-10cm x 0.4-0.8cm, equal, thickened to club-shaped toward base, rigid, hollow, fragile; whitish, straw-yellow to ocher-yellow when old; whitish cottony at top, increasingly whitish cottony-fibrillose in lower part, "sheathed with whitish woolly to cottony zones toward the base", (Breitenbach)

Veil:
cottony, leaving remnants on cap margin or a slight cottony-fibrillose ring

Odor:
spicy-fungoid, (Breitenbach)

Taste:
mild, fungoid, (Breitenbach)

Microscopic spores:
spores 11.4-16.1 x 4.5-6.3 microns, elliptic-navicular [elliptic - boat-shaped], smooth, dextrinoid; basidia (2)4-spored, 35-47 x 11-13 microns, clavate, with basal clamp connection; pleurocystidia not seen, cheilocystidia 22-35 x 10-16 microns, vesicular to clavate; cap cuticle "of prostrate to exserted hyphal ends" 90-420 x 8-12 microns, "interspersed with clavate to cylindric-flexuous cells at their base, all with light brown membranal pigmentation, most septa with clamps", (Breitenbach), spores in side view 11.0-18.5 x (4.0)4.5-6.0(6.5) microns, slightly convex adaxial and abaxial side, and a shallow suprahilar depression may be present, giving an amygdaloid-fusiform appearance, (Vellinga(1) with illustration of spores)

Spore deposit:
cream-yellow (Breitenbach)

Notes:
Lepiota clypeolaria has been found at least in BC, WA, OR, and northern CA, (Else Vellinga, pers. comm.). Breitenbach(4) gave the distribution as North America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa.

EDIBILITY

poisonous (Schalkwijk-Barendsen)