Summary:
Features include 1) a sulcate-striate cap with a dark gray to blackish disc and paler granular scales on a white background becoming sparser toward margin, 2) thin flesh, 3) free, close to crowded, white or whitish gills, 4) a narrow club-shaped stem that is white to whitish, sometimes discoloring pinkish, 5) an upturned, white or whitish ring on the stem, 6) forest habitat, and 7) microscopic characters.

Gills:
"free, close to crowded", 0.2-0.6cm broad; white or whitish; margin fimbriate [fringed], (Birkebak), free, 43-55 reaching stem, one subgill between neighboring gills, gills broad; white; edges smooth, (Breitenbach), crowded; white, (Trudell), pale cream (Courtecuisse)

Stem:
3.5-9cm x 0.1-0.4cm at top, widening downward to clavate base 0.3-0.6(1)cm wide; stem "hollow and often stuffed, somewhat fibrous-friable when fresh", sometimes flexuous; white to "ivory yellow" [Ridgway color], "sometimes discoloring pinkish flesh-colored to dingy orange-pink with age especially near the base, at very base often with some light grey tints"; "often appearing minutely fibrillose or minutely pruinose near apex", (Birkebak), 3-5(6)cm x 0.2-0.3cm, cylindric, "solid when young, hollow when old, fragile"; white; pruinose, (Breitenbach), slender, clavate; white with pinkish brown in lower part, (Trudell), color flesh-brownish when old, (Moser), up to 10cm x 0.5cm (Courtecuisse), 4-7cm x 0.3-0.7cm, slightly swollen at base; white; mealy, (Hansen, L.)

Veil:
ring median, thin, upturned, white to pale cream; sometimes there are loose remnants on cap margin, (Birkebak), ring membranous, white, pendent, (Breitenbach), ring white, somewhat fragile, often lost when old, (Trudell), ring fragile, grayish, (Courtecuisse)

Odor:
distinctly fungal, (Birkebak), none (Breitenbach), faintly spermatic (Bon)

Taste:
mild, insipid, (Breitenbach)

Microscopic spores:
spores 9.2-12.1 x 4.9-7.2 microns, oblong elliptic to slightly amygdaliform, dextrinoid, metachromatic, thick-walled, with an apical germ pore; basidia 4-spored, 18.7-23.1 x 9.2-10.8 microns, pyriform, surrounded by four pseudoparaphyses which are 14.3-17.6 x 6.6-10.2 microns, narrowly clavate, only slightly enlarged at top; cheilocystidia 22.0-73.7 x 7.7-19.8 microns, cylindric to very slightly fusiform, "somewhat flexuous, often slightly constricted before the apex giving the cells a slightly capitate appearance, often somewhat pedicellate to tapered, thin-walled, hyaline"; clamp connections absent, (Birkebak), spores 8.9-12.7 x 5.7-6.9 microns, oval, smooth, colorless, thick-walled, with a germ pore; basidia 4-spored, 18-28 x 10-12 microns, clavate, without basal clamp connection; pleurocystidia not seen, cheilocystidia 40-77 x 11-30 microns, polymorphic, clavate, cylindric, to fusiform-ventricose; cap cuticle "subhymeniform composed of polymorphic, clavate to pyriform cells" 25-65 x 10-25 microns, interspersed with occasional sphaerocysts about 25 microns across; septa without clamp connections, (Breitenbach)

Spore deposit:
white according to literature (Breitenbach)

Notes:
Collections were examined from WA where it may be the most commonly encountered Leucocoprinus species; it was apparently introduced to WA as the first collections dates from 1994. (Birkebak(1)). It was reported by Oregon Mid-coast Ecological Survey from Oregon on well rotted wood with a noticeable bulbous base on stem (Jake Hurlbert pers. comm.). Arora''s report from California has been questioned, as has H.V. Smith''s 1981 report from North America, (Birkebak). It was reported from California in Desjardin(6). A collection was found in BC in 1988 in a pot of Ficus by Scott Redhead at the Pacific Forestry Centre library which sadly no longer exists.

EDIBILITY

unknown (Phillips)