Summary:
Section Fragilipedes (Maas Geesteranus). Features include 1) a gray, slightly lubricous, striate cap, 2) white to grayish gills, 3) a gray stem that becomes reddish brown toward base, 4) a stem base with coarse whitish hairs that later form a sheath, 5) a yeast-like odor, and 6) growth in tufts in spring on conifer logs at high altitudes, often near melting snow.

Cap:
2-5cm across, "obtuse to convex, expanding to flat or nearly so", margin in some recurved when old; subhygrophanous [somewhat hygrophanous], dark blackish fuliginous at first, gradually becoming pale gray to pallid; bald and moist to slightly lubricous [greasy], margin often translucent-striate when old, (Smith), 2-5cm across, convex, flattening with age, margin when old sometimes curved up; subhygrophanous, dark blackish fuliginous, becoming pale gray to pallid; slightly lubricous when moist, bald, somewhat translucent-striate, (Maas Geesteranus), 2.5-5cm across, "convex to nearly flat with an umbo"; pale gray, dark gray, or bluish gray; "smooth, greasy, and striate", (Phillips)

Flesh:
cartilaginous; watery gray, often staining gray when bruised, (Smith), thin, cartilaginous; watery gray, (Maas Geesteranus), pale grayish (Phillips)

Gills:
broadly adnate or when old subdecurrent, close to subdistant, moderately broad; whitish to pale cinereous [pale gray], often staining gray when bruised; edges even, (Smith), broadly adnate, decurrent with a long line, at first ascending, becoming more or less horizontal, up to 0.5cm broad, somewhat broader in middle, interveined; white to pale gray, staining yellow when bruised, edges colored as faces; smooth or ribbed, (Maas Geesteranus), "adnate, subdistant, broad"; whitish, staining gray where bruised, (Phillips)

Stem:
4-10cm x 0.2-0.6cm, widening downward; pallid in upper part, darker in lower part and becoming reddish brown downwards ("Verona brown" Ridgway); "densely fibrillose-strigose over the lower two-thirds", (Smith), 4-10cm x 0.2-0.6cm, widening below, round to flattened, hollow, more or less curved; pallid in upper part, darker and becoming reddish brown in lower part; smooth, puberulous (finely hairy) in upper part at first, base covered with fairly coarse whitish fibrils that later collapse to form a close fitting silky covering, otherwise bald, (Maas Geesteranus), 4-10cm x 0.15-0.5cm, widening toward base; pale gray and smooth, becoming reddish brown towards the base; base covered in dense white hairs, (Phillips)

Odor:
pungent and yeasty (Smith), pungent and yeast-like, (Maas Geesteranus), fungusy, (Phillips)

Taste:
mild (Smith, Maas Geesteranus), distinct, strange, (Phillips)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-7 x 3.5-4 microns, "narrowly ovate to oblong, or pip-shaped when immature, smooth", distinctly blue in Melzer''s reagent, basidia 4-spored; pleurocystidia rare to absent, cheilocystidia scattered, 26-32 x 5-8 microns, filamentous to fusoid-ventricose, smooth; clamp connections present, (Smith), spores 6.3-7.2 x 3.1-4.4 microns, narrowly pip-shaped, smooth, amyloid; basidia 4-spored, 27-35 x 5.5-6.5 microns, narrowly clavate, with clamp connection, sterigmata up to 4.5 microns long; pleurocystidia uncommon, similar to cheilocystidia, cheilocystidia more or less widely scattered, little protruding, occurring mixed with basidia, 45-(at least)65 x 2-5.5 microns, subcylindric to subfusiform, smooth, clamped (but clamp connections hard to detect), (Maas Geesteranus), spores 7-10 x 5-6 microns, elliptic, amyloid, (Phillips)

Spore deposit:
white (Phillips)

Notes:
Collections were examined from WA and WY, (Smith). It also occurs in CA (Desjardin). There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia and collections from WA, OR, ID, CA, and MT at the University of Washington.

EDIBILITY

unknown (Phillips)