Summary:
Section Holoconiotae. Nolanea holoconiota recognized by 1) a bicolorous translucent-striate cap that is yellow brown with a grayish orange umbo, 2) white gills, 3) a pale yellow stem that is pruinose over at least the top half, 4) growth from spring to fall, 5) heterodiametric spores, and 6) cylindric caulocystidia originating from the center of the hypha, (Largent(1)). It is one of the commoner Nolanea spp. in spring.

Cap:
1-8cm across, conic to convex, expanding even to flat, apiculate [with a nipple] to acutely umbonate [cap said to be almost always acutely umbonate], margin incurved to decurved [downcurved] at times, flared, typically eroded and rimose [cracked] when old; hygrophanous, typically bicolorous because umbo fades first, light brown to yellow brown, fading to pale orange to grayish orange to grayish yellow; bald to silky-appressed-fibrillose, rarely obscurely fibrillose-scaly on margin, "appearing atomate or micaceous when faded, at times wrinkled or corrugate", translucent-striate almost to the disc

Flesh:
not mentioned for cap, but in stem colored as in cap, unchanging when bruised

Gills:
"narrowly adnexed to ascending adnate, close to subdistant, moderately broad", 0.3-0.5cm broad; white to pallid at first, [presumably becoming pinkish], edges colored as faces and entire

Stem:
3.5-10cm x 0.3-0.7(1.5)cm, "equal to tapering in either direction", round in cross-section, or occasionally compressed and grooved, stuffed then hollow; pale yellow to pale orange to light orange; pruinose upper 1/3 to 2/3 of length or completely, otherwise bald to appressed-fibrillose and longitudinally striate; tomentum at base abundant and white

Veil:
[absent]

Odor:
not distinctive

Taste:
"unpleasant to slightly bitter, at times not distinctive"

Microscopic spores:
spores (7.1)9.1-12.7 x 5.2-9.6 microns, 5-6 sided, distinctly angular, [smooth, inamyloid]; basidia 4-spored, 44.4-54.6 x 9.3-12.6 microns; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia rare to at times abundant, most easily seen toward cap margin, 29.3-100 x 4.5-15 microns, "rostrate-ventricose, somewhat capitate at times, colorless"; cap cuticle "a layer of loosely entangled hyphae on umbo, a cutis elsewhere, subpellis distinctly inflated", pileocystidia 35-140 x 4-6 microns, cylindric; stem cuticle except at very base, "composed of scattered to most often a dense layer of caulocystidia between which hyphae are repent", caulocystidia solitary, at times abundant, most often originating from middle of surface hyphae, 45-125 x 7-15 x 5-7 microns, cylindric; pigmentation most often absent, "when present and fresh with a uniform, slightly brownish, vacuolar or cytoplasmic pigment" in cap cuticle, "incrustations most typically absent or at most very minute and weak" on walls of slender hyphae of cap trama; clamp connections present at base of basidia, on tramal hyphae of gills, rare in stem and cap trama, absent on hyphae of cap cuticle

Spore deposit:
[presumably pinkish brown]

Notes:
Collections were examined from WA, OR, ID, AB, AK, CA, MT, NV, and WY, (Largent(1)). There are collections from BC at the Pacific Forestry Centre.

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Entoloma holoconiotum (Largent & Thiers) Noordel. & Co-David