Summary:
Distinctive features are velvety wine-red to brown cap, distant gills, and long shining reddish-black brittle stem.

Cap:
1-4(5)cm across, obtusely conic to bell-shaped, often expanding to convex or flat or with uplifted margin when old; bay-brown to reddish brown, brown, wine-red, or maroon; "dry, with a velvety or frosted appearance when fresh", furrowed or wrinkled when old or dried, (Arora), 1-3.5(5.5)cm across, conic or bell-shaped when young, broadly conic or convex when old; dark reddish brown when young, reddish brown when old, margin reddish brown when young, becoming brown, light brown or brownish orange when old; somewhat velvety, dull, opaque, disc smooth or subrugulose [somewhat wrinkled], margin even, becoming striate, (Desjardin), may be umbonate

Flesh:
thin, pliant, (Arora); 0.05-0.1cm thick; buff, (Desjardin)

Gills:
"adnate to nearly free, well-spaced, broad"; "white to buff to pinkish or tinged cap color", (Arora), "adnexed, distant, broad", 1-2 series of subgills; buff or yellowish white, (Desjardin)

Stem:
5-13cm x 0.15-0.3cm, equal, usually long and thin, tough but brittle (dig up rather than pluck); reddish black to deep chestnut in lower part, often paler (pinkish or sometimes pallid) in upper part; smooth, polished, base often with whitish mycelium, (Arora), 6-9.5cm x 0.2-0.3cm, equal, round in cross-section, fibrous but easily broken, not insititious; top grayish red or brown, base dark brown to black; shiny, bald in upper part, "base covered with white, strigose mycelial hairs", "basal mycelium forming an extensive mycelial mat", (Desjardin), may be curved

Veil:
absent

Odor:
mild (Arora, Desjardin)

Taste:
mild (Desjardin)

Microscopic spores:
spores 11-15 x 5-6.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid (Arora), spores 12.3-16.2(16.6) x 4.8-6.3 microns, almond-shaped or subfusiform (somewhat spindle-shaped); basidia 4-spored, 38-50 x 7-10 microns, clavate or spheropedunculate; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia "abundant in young specimens, often scarce in older specimens", 15-24 x 3.6-6 microns, "cylindric or clavate, diverticulate", diverticula numerous, 1.8-10.8 x 0.6-2.1 microns, apical, rod-like or conic, often branched, basal part of cells colorless, thin-walled, diverticula "solid, yellow or pale ochraceous, dextrinoid", (Desjardin)

Spore deposit:
white (Arora)

Notes:
Collections examined from BC, WA, OR, ID, and CA, (Redhead).

EDIBILITY

too tough and thin (Arora)