Summary:
Features include 1) a dark red-brown to yellowish brown unbroken disc, toward the appendiculate margin breaking into pinkish brown to yellowish brown, fibrous scales on light brown background, 2) crowded whitish gills, 3) a stem that is pale, shaggy in its lower part, becoming smooth in its upper part, 4) a cottony ring that is yellowish or pinkish brown, not persisting, and 5) microscopic characters including long ventricose spores with a suprahilar depression (inverted penguin-shaped). The illustrations of Lepiota clypeolaria in Arora''s Mushrooms Demystified 1986 and in Lincoff''s Audubon field guide 1981 are of Lepiota magnispora according to Vellinga(1). Vellinga(1) found it quite common when collecting in the west of the USA and in western Canada. It was originally described by Murrill from WA. Both L. magnispora and L. clypeolaria occur throughout the United States but L. magnispora is the more common of the two, (Vellinga(1)). L. magnispora is more common in the west and L. clypeolaria in the east [of the United States], (Vellinga(11)). |Lepiota ventriosospora has been considered a synonym, but there is DNA evidence that it is distinct. Collections match from Idaho and Arizona. (D. Miller, pers. comm.). For now we will consider the two species as a morphological group.

Cap:
2.5-5cm across, convex, disc becoming at least slightly raised; disc dark brown, unbroken, fibrous, margin breaking into overlapping pinkish-tinged brown fibrous scales on a light brown background; [presumably dry], felty marginal remnants hanging from the edge, (Sieger), 4-6(8)cm across, hemispheric then conic to broadly conic, finally flat; dark red-brown in center, toward the margin increasingly ocher-brown to orange-brown scales on light ocher-yellow background, later the scales dark red-brown; in the center when young venose to slightly tuberculate-verrucose, toward margin splitting to form isolated fine scales, later with concentric, broadly conic, erect fine scales, margin radially fibrillose and floccose from hanging veil remnants, (Breitenbach), 4-8cm across, with ocher scales on white background, (Hansen), 4-8cm across, ochraceous with bright yellow to brown scales; center smooth, (Moser)

Flesh:
whitish (Sieger), thin; whitish, brownish in cap center, (Breitenbach)

Gills:
free, crowded; whitish, (Sieger), free, 38-43 reaching stem, 3-7 subgills between each pair of gills, gills broad; white; edges smooth, (Breitenbach)

Stem:
6-10.5cm x 0.5-1.2cm, widening slightly downward, hollow, "pale and smooth above, shaggy below with woolly yellowish or pinkish brown scales and sometimes with brown spiral bands", (Sieger), 6-10cm x 0.4-0.8(1)cm, cylindric, widened slightly at base, stem elastic, solid becoming hollow; "entire surface densely fibrillose-floccose when young, apex white, woolly, fibrillose-cottony, color grading from ocher-yellow to orange to orange-brown below, base slightly thickened, glabrescent and ocher-yellow when old", (Breitenbach), 4-10cm x 0.3-0.8cm, yellow floccose in lower part, (Hansen), "yellowish, ochraceous, on lower part yellowish-woolly, scaly", (Moser)

Veil:
ring yellowish or pinkish brown, cottony, not persistent, (Sieger)

Odor:
pleasantly fungoid (Breitenbach)

Taste:
mild, pleasantly fungoid, (Breitenbach)

Microscopic spores:
spores in side view (12.0)13.5-25.0 x 4.0-6.0 microns, for the type 15.2-20.7 x 4.5-5.8 microns, with straight abaxial side, convex adaxial side and suprahilar depression [inverted penguin-shaped], dextrinoid, congophilic, (Vellinga(1) with illustration); basidia 4-spored, 30-37 x 10-14 microns; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia not seen; cap covering with long elements, about 175-255 x 10-15 microns, "with rounded apex, with pale brown intracellular pigment, some short clavate elements at base present as well"; clamp connections present, (Vellinga(1)), spores 17.8-22.4 x 4.2-5.4 microns, fusiform, smooth, dextrinoid, (Breitenbach), spores 13-20.8 x 4-5 microns, "bulging on one side and with a dent-like depression at the base of the hilar appendage, without a germ pore", reddish brown in Melzer''s reagent, [presumably smooth]; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia ovate; cap cuticle long cylindric hairs connected with clamp connections to a supporting layer of brown septate hyphae, (Sieger), 14-19 x 4-6 microns, with a suprahilar depression, (Hansen with illustration), spores 14-18 x 4-6 microns, with umbilicate depression, (Moser with illustration)

Spore deposit:
light yellow (Breitenbach)

Notes:
The holotype is from Seattle WA. L. magnispora group is found at least in BC, WA, OR, ID, and CA, (Else Vellinga, pers. comm. when L. ventriosospora was considered a synonym). Collections were used from AZ and Netherlands, (Vellinga(4) when L. ventriosospora was considered a synonym). Breitenbach(4) give the distribution of Lepiota ventriosospora as North America, Europe, and Asia.

EDIBILITY

"edible" in some European field guides, but avoid because some lookalikes deadly (Sieger)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Lepiota ventriosospora D.A. Reid