Summary:
Typicae (Smith), Fragilipedes (Maas Geesteranus). Mycena murina is one of many nondescript, odorless, gray to brownish Mycenas found under conifers which are differentiated microscopically. |Smith used the name Mycena stannea (Fr.) Quelet for this species, giving the name Mycena murina (Murrill) Murrill as a synonym, but Maas Geesteranus later reversed this, using the name Mycena murina (Murrill) Murrill, and giving Mycena stannea (Fr.) Quel. as a synonym, seemingly for nomenclatural reasons. Both the online Species Fungorum and MycoBank, accessed Oct 21, 20, listed them independently. |Maas Geesteranus also says that of three randomly chosen Smith specimens out of 26 that Smith cited in his monograph for Mycena stannea, 32-655, 4377, and 9072, none represented the true Mycena murina, all three differed from one another, and one (9072) was Mycena leptocephala.

Gills:
adnate, decurrent with a tooth, ascending, broader in middle; whitish to grayish (also umbrinous according to Murrill), edges colored as faces, (Maas Geesteranus), adnate, ascending, close to subdistant, narrow but sometimes broader in middle; at maturity pale or dark gray with edge pallid, (Smith)

Stem:
3-5cm x 0.1-0.2cm, equal, round in cross-section, fragile, hollow; more or less colored as cap, darker at base; pruinose at top at first, base "covered with long, coarse, flexuous, whitish fibrils", stem otherwise bald, (Maas Geesteranus), 3-8cm x 0.1-0.4cm, equal or nearly so, round in cross-section or compressed, hollow, fragile; dark to light gray, usually more or less cap-colored, the top usually pallid; bald except for the white-strigose base, apex pruinose at first, "watery and translucent, or opaque and then frequently twisted-striate", (Smith)

Odor:
not distinctive (Smith)

Taste:
not distinctive (Smith)

Microscopic spores:
spores 8.1-10.3 x 5.6-7.2 microns, broadly pip-shaped [elliptic], smooth, amyloid; basidia 4-spored, 25-30 x 7-10 microns, clavate, clamped, with sterigmata 4.5-5.5 microns long; cheilocystidia (15)40-54 x 9-21.5 microns, forming a (not always continuous) band, "subfusiform, utriform, fusiform, obpyriform, clavate, clamped, smooth or apically drawn out into a single neck or covered with a few to several, simple to somewhat branched excrescences" that are -26 x 1.5-4.5 microns [sic], pleurocystidia scattered, similar to the simple-shaped cheilocystidia; lamellar trama brownish vinescent in Melzer''s reagent; hyphae of pileipellis 1.8-4.5 microns wide, clamped, covered with simple to much branched, cylindrical excrescences 3.5-22 x 1.8-2.2 microns, "forming dense masses, not gelatinized"; hyphae of cortical layer of stem about 2.5 microns wide, bald or sparsely diverticulate, excrescences 1.8-4.5 x 1.8 microns, not gelatinized, the terminal cells with longer excrescences, (Maas Geesteranus), spores 8-11 x 5-6(7) microns, broadly elliptic to suboval, smooth, amyloid; basidia usually 4-spored but 2-spored forms are known, (Smith)

Spore deposit:
[presumably white]

Notes:
Mycena murina has been found at least in WA, OR, ID, MB, ON, CA, CO, MI, and NY, and is "very abundant during cool, wet fall seasons throughout the United States and Canada", (Smith). It has also been found in NT (Fort Smith) (Bigelow) and Europe (Maas Geesteranus). There are collections from BC as Mycena stannea at the University of British Columbia.

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Mycena stannea (Fr.) Quel.