Summary:
Mycenella nodulosa was described by Smith as Mycena nodulosa A.H. Sm. (Section Nodulosae), but Singer (1975) says Mycenella probably includes this species. It is distinguished by the combination of a rooting stem, reddish stains on the gills, round, spiny, inamyloid spores, and a palisade layer forming the cuticle of the cap.

Cap:
1-3.5cm across, obtusely conic, becoming bell-shaped or expanded and with a conic umbo, margin appressed against stem when young; fuscous to black on umbo, dark or light gray toward margin, fading to pallid dingy gray; at first hoary because of numerous projecting cystidia (finely downy under lens), soon bald, striate to disc when moist

Flesh:
thin, soft, pliant; pale fuscous, "in extreme age sometimes staining reddish brown"

Gills:
"deeply adnexed to broadly rounded and depressed-adnate, moderately close", 27-33 reaching stem, broad (0.5cm); "whitish to glaucous gray and densely pruinose under a lens from cystidia", spotted reddish brown when old

Stem:
6-8cm x (0.1)0.2-0.3cm, with a pseudorhiza 4-8cm long, "pliant, hollow, with a sharply differentiated cartilaginous rind"; fuscous at first, becoming pale gray to whitish in upper part; evenly covered with a white-pruinose-downy layer of colorless cystidia

Odor:
not distinctive

Taste:
not distinctive

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-7 microns in diameter, round, with aculei 2-3 x 0.5-2 microns scattered over the surface, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored, 28-34 x 7-8 microns; "cheilocystidia and pleurocystidia similar and abundant", 60-80 x 10-14 microns, "unbranched, fusoid-ventricose with a greatly elongated neck", tops usually incrusted, cap cuticle a palisade layer of clavate basidium-like or contorted cells 18-22 x 5-9 microns but difficult to demonstrate in dried material

Spore deposit:
[presumably white]

Notes:
Mycenella nodulosa was found on the Olympic Peninsula in WA (Smith). It was reported from BC (Redhead(5) p.7, as Mycenella nodulosa (A.H. Sm.) Vellinga).

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Mycena nodulosa A.H. Sm.