Summary:
Section Adonidae (Smith), Section Monticola (Maas Geesteranus). Features include 1) a hygrophanous, pinkish red, striate cap, 2) close, whitish to pinkish gills, 3) a pink stem that becomes brownish from the base upward, 4) growth on needle beds under pine at 3500-4500 feet, 5) a white spore deposit, and 6) microscopic characters. The description is from Smith(1) except where otherwise indicated.

Cap:
1-3cm across, conic to obtusely bell-shaped becoming flat or umbonate, margin appressed against stem in young specimens, frequently with uplifted wavy margin when old; hygrophanous, "Pompeian red" [purplish red] on the disc and "light jasper red" [flame red] to "coral pink" [pinkish red] toward the margin, sometimes the disc not darker, fading to "flesh color"; bald, moist, translucent-striate when moist, becoming slightly sulcate [grooved]

Flesh:
thin, brittle; incarnate

Gills:
adnate, ascending, becoming horizontal and slightly decurrent toothed, close (23-28 reaching stem), moderately broad (about 0.3cm); ''edges even and whitish or tinged "flesh pink" to "coral pink" when the faces are similarly tinted'', (Smith), "pale flesh-colored pink, the edge convex, concolorous with the sides or whitish", (Maas Geesteranus)

Stem:
4-7cm x 0.1-0.35cm, "equal above a narrowed crooked base, hollow"; "coral pink" over all when fresh, soon becoming sordid brown from base upward and finally "bister" over the lower part; juice watery and scanty, base sparsely fibrillose, top faintly frosted, soon naked and polished in upper part, (Smith), "pink all over at first, turning dingy brown from base upwards", (Maas Geesteranus)

Odor:
not distinctive

Taste:
not distinctive

Microscopic spores:
spores 7-10 x 4-5 microns, elliptic or pointed at one end, inamyloid, [Maas Geesteranus says weakly amyloid], [presumably smooth]; basidia 4-spored, 26-30 x 7-8 microns, pleurocystidia none, cheilocystidia embedded, 28-35 x 9-12 microns, colorless, clavate, the enlarged part covered with short rod-like projections; gill trama vinaceous brown in iodine; cap trama "homogeneous beneath a thickish subgelatinous (in KOH) pellicle, becoming vinaceous brown in iodine below the pellicle", (Smith)

Spore deposit:
[presumably white]

Notes:
Mycena monticola has been found at least in WA and OR, (Smith), WA, OR, CA (Castellano). There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia.

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