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Species Information
Summary: Section Deminutivae (Smith), Section Polyadelphia (Maas Geesteranus). Features include 1) small size, 2) a dry, striate cap that is grayish sepia with a whitish margin, 3) adnate, subcrowded, whitish gills, 4) a thin, cartilaginous stem that is fawn to hazel or grayish sepia, 5) growth on the ground from old fern rhizomes, and 6) microscopic characters. Redhead(20) showed that Mycena lohwagii Singer is the correct name for the species reported from Washington and Oregon by Smith under the misapplied name Mycena tenella. Redhead reported the species also from BC.
Mycena lohwagii has been found at least in BC, WA, and OR, (Redhead), and the Caucasus (Maas Geesteranus).
Cap: 0.2-0.55cm across, "mostly parabolic, often somewhat flattened centrally with scalloped, sometimes flared edges, or more evenly convex"; at first grayish sepia with whitish margins, soon white to whitish with pale hazel, honey or buff center; dry, translucent-striate and somewhat plicate-striate with age, (Redhead), 0.3-0.6cm across, truncate bell-shaped without umbo; white with brownish center; bald, translucent-striate, (Maas Geesteranus), 0.3-1cm across, obtusely conic, remaining so when old; grayish to avellaneous or "light pinkish cinnamon " to "vinaceous buff", fading to nearly white with faint rosy tint or disc finally creamy yellowish [Redhead suggests that the rosy tint may have been due to the observed inclusion of some M. pterigena specimens in his collections]; moist, striate at first, somewhat sulcate [grooved] when old, (Smith)
Flesh: thin; cap-colored, (Redhead), very thin, (Maas Geesteranus), thin, but cartilaginous and firm (Smith)
Gills: broadly adnate, ascending, subcrowded, moderately narrow, 1-2 tiers of subgills; white or whitish and only faintly tinted on the faces, (Redhead), adnate to subdecurrent, ascending, with concave to horizontal edge, 14-17 reaching stem; white, edges colored as faces, (Maas Geesteranus), adnate, close to subdistant, narrow; white or tinged with rose, edge at first pinker than face of gill, (Smith, note that Redhead suggests the rosy tint may have been due to the observed inclusion of some M. pterigena specimens in Smith''s collections)
Stem: 1.9-7.5cm x 0.02-0.08cm, often slightly swollen at the base near the point of attachment, very narrow and straight in upper part, cartilaginous, hollow, extremely brittle near base; fawn to hazel or grayish sepia, except for the whitish apex; bald, polished, seated on a few radiating colorless hairs, (Redhead), 6cm long and 0.05cm wide, equal, not fragile; pale yellowish brownish; smooth and bald, the base attached to substrate "by a few radiating, whitish mycelial strands, at times also covered with long, coarse fibrils", (Maas Geesteranus), 6-10cm long and 0.1cm or less wide, rather firm and elastic; dark dingy gray with paler top; bald, (Smith)
Odor: none or vaguely of cut grass (Redhead), none (Maas Geesteranus)
Taste: none or vaguely of cut grass (Redhead)
Microscopic spores: spores 7.5-20 x 5-6.5 microns, broadly ovate to almond-shaped, strongly amyloid, colorless, thin-walled, bearing a conspicuous apiculus; basidia 4-spored, 22-29 x 8.5-9 microns, clavate, clamped; pleurocystidia only near gill edge and similar to cheilocystidia, cheilocystidia abundant, forming a sterile margin in most, inamyloid, "clavate to subvesiculose and apically echinate with numerous short rod-shaped projections" up to 4 microns long; clamp connections mentioned for basidia, cap and gill trama, and (obscure) stem hyphae, (Redhead), spores 9-9.7 x 4.7-5.2 microns, pip-shaped (elliptic), smooth, weakly amyloid; basidia 22-28 x 7-8 microns, clavate; pleurocystidia absent. cheilocystidia numerous, 25-40 x 6.5-15 microns, clavate to obpyriform, clamp connections present but difficult to detect, more or less densely covered with shorter or longer cylindric excrescences, (Maas Geesteranus), spores 8-10 x 5-6 microns, smooth, colorless, staining faintly bluish gray with iodine in chloral hydrate; basidia 4-spored; cystidia abundant on edge and rare or scattered on faces of gills, their apices echinulate, (Smith)
Spore deposit: [presumably white]
Habitat / Range
in small to large densely aggregated groupings "emerging through litter and loamy soils" from old underground rhizomes of Athyrium filix-femina in dense coniferous forests, (Redhead), densely cespitose [in tufts], mainly on fern rhizomes, (Maas Geesteranus), cespitose to densely gregarious in low land (Smith)
Similar Species
Mycena pterigena also occurs growing from ferns of the same species, but M. pterigena is smaller, coral-colored when young (unlike the grayish sepia M. lohwagii), colonizes frond tissue rather than rhizomes, has narrower spores, and has longer projections on the cheilocystidia, (Redhead(20)).
