Summary:
Features include 1) a hygrophanous, slightly viscid, striate cap that is various shades or mixtures of purplish brown, date brown, yellowish brown, beige, gray-brown, lilac, or pink, 2) gills that are grayish violet, turning more brownish with a lilac tint, 3) a stem that is brownish violet, becoming pale purplish brown to dingy flesh-colored, smooth, and pruinose at the top, 4) a radish-like odor and taste, 5) growth on the ground, 6) white spore deposit, and 7) microscopic characters. This is a species similar in appearance to Mycena pura (see SIMILAR section). According to Maas Geesteranus(1), Mycena pearsoniana Dennis apud Pearson in Naturalist 50. 1955 was not validly published. According to Arne Aronsen, "Harder et al. (2010) showed that the Mycena pearsoniana morphospecies might harbour two phylogenetic species. This observation was followed up by Harder et al. (2011), where the authors referred to phylogenetic analyses of 91 ITS sequences of both European and North and South American Calodontes collections. Their analysis shows that European collections identified as M. pearsoniana fall into two sibling clades together with both inamyloid and weakly amyloid North American collections. This result indicates that the inamyloidity of the spores in M. pearsoniana may not be of that high taxonomic value as earlier believed. The spores in some collections may show a weak amyloid reaction after some 40 minutes." (Aronsen). Mycena pearsoniana may be mistaken for Mycena pura and could be fairly common.

Cap:
0.8-2cm across, hemispheric to bell-shaped, with or without slight umbo, flattening when old; hygrophanous, "variably colored, very dark dingy purplish brown when young, then becoming pale date brown or yellowish brown with a lilaceous or pinkish tint, fading pale isabelline, with concolorous or paler margin"; "more or less sulcate, translucent-striate", delicately rugulose [wrinkled] to smooth, bald, "slightly glutinous when wet", (Maas Geesteranus), up to 2.5cm across, sometimes umbonate; brownish lilac, pink-brownish, (Moser), 1-2.5cm across, convex to flat; brown to gray-brown, with pink or lilac tint, (Hansen, L.)

Flesh:
thin, fragile; "watery brownish, with some violaceous tint which gradually disappears", (Maas Geesteranus)

Gills:
broadly adnate, decurrent with a tooth, at first arcuate, then almost horizontal, 18-26 reaching stem; at first grayish violet, gradually turning more brownish with some lilaceous tint, the edge "at first violaceous, then dingy purplish brownish, finally pallescent"; surface smooth to ribbed, dorsally interveined when old, edge uneven to eroded or crenate, (Maas Geesteranus), horizontally adnate to decurrent; violaceous gray, (Moser), broadly adnate to decurrent; violaceous gray, edges colored as faces, (Hansen, L.)

Stem:
2.5-6.5(9)cm x 0.1-0.25cm, equal or somewhat widened in lower part, fragile to firm; "at first fairly dark violet with a slight brownish shade, becoming rather pale purplish brown to pale dingy flesh-coloured"; smooth, "pruinose to floccose-puberulous" in upper part, bald further down; "the base covered with long, coarse, whitish fibrils", (Maas Geesteranus), 3-6.5cm x 0.1-0.25cm, colored like cap, (Hansen, L.)

Odor:
musty or radish-like, (Maas Geesteranus), faint, of radish, (Hansen, L.)

Taste:
radish-like, (Maas Geesteranus), mild but unpleasant (Buczacki)

Microscopic spores:
spores 7.2-9.0 x 3.8-4.7 microns, pip-shaped, smooth, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored, 22-27 x 6.5-7 microns, clavate, with clamp connection; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia forming a sterile band, 30-80 x 7-12.5 microns, clavate, subcylindric, subfusiform, smooth, apically obtuse or more rarely mucronate; clamp connections present, (Maas Geesteranus), spores 5-7.5 x 2.5-4.5 microns, inamyloid; cheilocystidia 50-370 microns, cylindric-clavate, (Moser), spores 5-7.5 x 2.5-4.5 microns, elliptic, inamyloid; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia 50-70 x 9-15 microns, clavate to cylindric, (Hansen, L.)

Spore deposit:
white (Buczacki)

Notes:
This species was collected by Paul Kroeger on Vancouver Island in BC (voucher at DAOM in Ottawa) and in Haida Gwaii in BC.

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