Summary:
Sacchariferae (Maas Geesteranus), Smith places in Subgenus Pseudomycena (characterized by a bulb or disc at the stem base) Section Tenerrimae (coarsely granular under a hand lens due to warty round cells). Features include small size, a dry pale gray cap with a white-powdery sugar-like covering, white gills, a white stem with a thickened base, growth on conifer needles and fern debris, a white spore deposit, and elliptic, weakly amyloid spores. The description is derived from Smith(1).

Cap:
(0.2)0.3-0.6cm across, convex to obtuse becoming conic or remaining convex, the margin on some flaring or recurved [upcurved] when old; pale gray under white powdery covering, fading to chalk white; dry and powdery due to sugar-like covering

Flesh:
thin, flaccid

Gills:
free or attached by a slight tooth, distant to subdistant, narrow; white

Stem:
2-3cm long and up to 0.1cm thick, slightly thickened toward base, tubular, white villous from base upward (hairs shorter toward top), appearing finely pruinose or chalky in appearance when old, "base abruptly inserted on fallen larch needles"

Odor:
not distinctive

Taste:
not distinctive

Microscopic spores:
spores 7-9(10) x 4-5 microns, elliptic, weakly amyloid, [presumably smooth]; basidia usually 4-spored, rarely 2-spored; pleurocystidia none, cheilocystidia abundant, 18-28 x 9-15 microns, clavate, the enlarged part covered with small blunt projections or densely warty, cap tissue covered with layer of inflated or spherical readily detachable warty cells 18-24 x 10-30 microns

Spore deposit:
[presumably white]

Notes:
Mycena alphitophora is found at least in BC, WA, ON, AL, MI, NC, NY, OH, TN, and Belize, (Smith). It occurs in North America, Bermuda, and Europe, (Maas Geesteranus).

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Mycena osmundicola J.E. Lange