Summary:
Features include 1) small size, 2) a cap with an orange brown to brown disc, a slight umbo, and orange brown to brown fibrils on a white background, 3) a slender, smooth, whitish stem that may have a lavender tinge, 4) a fragile, small, fleeting, membranous, superior ring, 5) an often disagreeable odor, and 6) microscopically, wedge-shaped to bullet-shaped, weakly dextrinoid spores, and a hymeniform cap cuticle. |Some of the Pacific Northwest reports may be Lepiota castaneidisca which has a more red-brown cap. At one time it had been considered by some as a synonym of Lepiota cristata, but it is "macroscopically, molecularly, and ecologically distinct". The cap color of Lepiota cristata varies "from very pale to dark brown, with the typical colour a kind of orange-brown". It "grows especially in ruderal, locally nutrient-rich places, on woodchips, in city-parks, on roadsides etc., and is not commonly found in natural habitats." The cap of Lepiota castaneidisca is orange reddish, warm (pinkish to reddish) brown to pale orange-brown, in old fruitbodies losing the reddish tinges. Habitat is in Sequoia sempervirens (Redwood) groves, in stands of Cupressus macrocarpa, and in mixed Quercus agrifolia forests. It is widespread in coastal central and northern California. (Vellinga(2)). This habitat given is more typical of California than the Pacific Northwest, but as communicated to E. Vellinga by Birkebak, it occurs north into WA. |Lepiota cristata group is commonly reported in the Pacific Northwest.

Cap:
1.5-5cm across, ovate, becoming broadly convex to nearly flat, obtuse or umbonate; 'disc "mikado brown" to "russet", scales toward margin paler and reddish brown to "pinkish buff"', on white to pale cream background; cuticle at first continuous, rupturing into concentric rings of small scales, margin often without cuticle, (H.V. Smith), 1.8-4cm across, convex to broadly bell-shaped, slightly umbonate; light tan brown to ochraceous; disrupted concentrically into flat squamules [fine scales], (Akers), varies in cap color from very pale to dark brown, with the typical color a kind of orange-brown, (Vellinga(2))

Flesh:
very thin, fragile; white, unchanging, in stem pinkish, (H.V. Smith)

Gills:
rather close to stem, crowded, narrow to subventricose [somewhat ventricose], 0.3-0.4cm broad; white, unchanging; edges minutely crenulate [scalloped], (H.V. Smith), whitish (Akers)

Stem:
3-7cm x 0.2-0.5cm at top, equal, hollow or loosely stuffed; whitish in upper part, pale pinkish tan or dingy lavender in lower part; bald, shining or sparsely silky fibrillose, (H.V. Smith), up to 5.5cm long, width 0.2-0.3cm, equal, straight to barely flexuous [wavy]; pallid, (Akers)

Veil:
ring superior, small, white, evanescent [fleeting], (H.V. Smith), ring "membranous, tattered, fragile, whitish", (Akers)

Odor:
strong, disagreeable, a few collections with an agreeable or fragrant odor, (H.V. Smith)

Taste:
subfarinaceous [somewhat farinaceous] to disagreeable, (H.V. Smith)

Microscopic spores:
spores 5.5-7 x 3-4 microns, wedge-shaped, truncate at broadest end; pleurocystidia none, cheilocystidia 12-25 x 5-10 microns, inflated; cap cuticle and the scales a compact hymeniform layer of pyriform cells about 50 microns and 10-17 microns wide, "between the scales the surface is of colorless appressed hyphae", (H.V. Smith), spores 6-7.5 x 3-3.5 microns, projectile-shaped (illustrated, showing truncate base with apiculus at one corner, and bluntly pointed at the other end), cap cuticle a hymeniform layer of clavate to cylindrical cells, (Hansen), spores 6.6-9.4 x 2.6-3.5 microns, wedge-shaped, narrow and subtriangular [somewhat triangular] to bullet-shaped or footprint-shaped with base truncate and spurred [illustrated], hilar appendix fairly prominent, spores colorless in KOH, weakly dextrinoid (pale orange brown in Melzer''s reagent), wall smooth, thick (0.5 microns), germ pore absent; basidia 12-13 x 6-7.3 microns, basidioles 9.7-19.4 x 4-6.6 microns, all hymenial cells colorless in KOH; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia abundant, 23.3-35.2 x 7.9-11.9 microns, clavate, walls smooth, thin-sturdy, colorless in KOH; cap cuticle hymeniform, elements 16-38 x 6-11 microns; clamp connections absent, (Akers)

Spore deposit:
[presumably whitish]

Notes:
It was reported specifically for BC (in Redhead(5)), reported from WA by Andrew Parker, pers. comm., and studied from CA, ID, China, Luxembourg, and Netherlands, by Vellinga(2). It is also recorded from FL (Akers(1)), MI (Smith, H.V.), and found more widely. There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia. The University of Washington has collections from WA, ID, AK, AZ, CA, MI, NC, NM, NY, ON, and Scotland.

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