Summary:
Section Diversiformes (Smith), Section Insignes (Maas Geesteranus). Note the whitish color assumed by the conifer needles over the area on which the fruiting bodies develop. Other features include small size, a whitish cap that is at least somewhat viscid at first but soon dry, whitish gills, a viscid, watery grayish white stem, growth on needle beds, and microscopic characters. The description is derived from Smith(1) except where noted [part of the Smith(1) description involving the last part of gills and first part of stem is left out in printing].

Cap:
0.5-1cm across, convex or flattened somewhat on disc, becoming broadly convex or flat, margin appressed to stem at first, then flaring slightly, sometimes wavy when old; dull milk white or the disc "cartridge buff" to "tilleul buff", dingy whitish overall when old; surface at first somewhat viscid to viscid and shining when wet, soon dry and dull or faintly pruinose under a lens, faintly translucent-striate to disc, cap skin thin and tenacious but separable

Flesh:
thin, moderately fragile; pallid

Gills:
at first bluntly adnate, soon with a short-decurrent or long-decurrent tooth, close to subdistant, 12-14 reaching stem, narrow but broadest at point of attachment, about 0.15-0.2cm, (Smith), broadly adnate, decurrent with a tooth, arcuate, 12-14 reaching stem; whitish, the edge pallid and not gelatinous, (Maas Geesteranus)

Stem:
[measurements left out], equal, cartilaginous, pliant; shining and viscid when wet, soon dry and dull; base sparsely white-strigose, (Smith), 2-3cm long and about 0.1cm wide, equal, straight to flexuous [wavy]; watery grayish white, whitish above; puberulous [finely downy] in upper part, becoming bald in lower part; "covered with few, coarse, agglutinated, white fibrils at the base", (Maas Geesteranus)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-7.5 x 3 microns, narrowly elliptic, amyloid; basidia 4-spored, 20-22 x 5-6 microns; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia abundant, 30-37 x 6-10 microns, colorless, "clavate to fusoid, often forked, the apices evenly tapered to sharp points, often with occasional short projections arising anywhere from near the base to the apex and in an irregular manner," (Smith), spores (7.2)8.1-9.2 x 3.6-4.6 microns, pip-shaped, smooth, amyloid; basidia 4-spored, (not quite mature) 24-27 x 6.5-7 microns, clavate, clamped; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia 18-45 x 3.5-9 x 0.8-2.0 microns, forming a not always continuous sterile band, "fusiform, lageniform or somewhat irregularly shaped, not infrequently curved or flexuous, clamped, gradually to abruptly passing into a mostly very slender neck, more rarely with a forked neck, sometimes sprouting one or more coarse excrescences"; clamp connections present, (Maas Geesteranus)

Spore deposit:
[presumably white]

Notes:
Mycena insignis has been found at least in WA. A collection by O. Ceska and S. Berch from Vancouver Island in BC is deposited at the University of British Columbia.

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