Summary:
Features include a hygrophanous, reddish brown to vinaceous brown cap that is depressed and striate, thin flesh, decurrent gills, a stem colored as the cap, growth on moss in the open, white spore deposit, and elliptic, smooth, inamyloid spores.

Cap:
1-2.5(4)cm across, convex at first, with disc depressed and margin incurved, expanding to broadly funnel-shaped, but often remaining with a spreading margin; hygrophanous, dark reddish brown to dark vinaceous brown at first, paler with expansion, "but the striations remaining dark and prominent, fading with age or loss of moisture to buff or grayish vinaceous"; moist, bald, striate when moist, opaque when faded, (Bigelow(5)), 0.5-2cm across, "convex, deeply umbilicate; reddish brown, pinkish brown to yellowish; smooth and deeply radially fluted", (Phillips), 0.7-1.5cm across, light reddish brown when moist, beige with a pink tinge when dry; smooth to finely furfuraceous, translucent striate almost to center, (Breitenbach)

Flesh:
thin, pliant or fragile; whitish, (Bigelow(5)), thin, watery; gray-brown, (Breitenbach)

Gills:
"long decurrent, close to subdistant, rarely distant", narrow at mid-portion to moderately broad, forking at times, usually not interveined; pallid to pale vinaceous gray, sometimes tinged brownish when old, (Bigelow(5)), "decurrent, widely spaced; brownish", (Phillips), pinkish-tinged or violaceous-tinged gills that fade to yellowish or creamy when old (Arora), long-decurrent, 12-16 reaching stem, 1-2 subgills between neighboring gills, gills broad, some forked; dingy whitish to cream, with a brown-reddish tinge; edges smooth, (Breitenbach)

Stem:
1-3(4)cm x 0.1-0.4cm, equal or nearly so, stuffed but soon hollow, rather brittle, compressed at times; colored as cap or top somewhat paler, "faintly pruinose at first but soon naked and polished", base with slight white mycelium, (Bigelow(5)), 1-3cm x 0.1-0.2cm, paler than cap, smooth (Phillips). 2-3.5cm x 0.1-0.15cm, cylindric, base at times somewhat bulbous and white-pubescent; light reddish brown and slightly white-fibrillose; smooth, (Breitenbach)

Veil:
[presumably absent]

Odor:
not distinctive (Bigelow(5)), faintly mushroomy (Breitenbach)

Taste:
not distinctive (Bigelow(5)), mild to bitterish (Phillips), mild, mushroomy, (Breitenbach)

Microscopic spores:
spores (6)7-9(11) x 4-5(6) microns, elliptic to broadly elliptic or oval, smooth, inamyloid; basidia mostly 4-spored but sometimes 1-spored, 2-spores, or 3-spored, 21-31(35) x 5-8 microns; clamp connections present, (Bigelow(5)), spores 7-10 x 4.5-6 microns, almond-shaped, (Phillips), spores 6.5-8.8 x 3.6-5.6 microns, elliptic, smooth, iodine negative, colorless, with droplets; basidia 4-spored, 22-32 x 5.5-7 microns, narrowly clavate, with basal clamp connection; cheilocystidia: marginal cells 22-35 x 3-4.5 microns, "cylindric, some subcapitate or slightly gnarled or flexuous apically"; cap cuticle of +/- parallel hyphae 3-10 microns wide, brown incrusted, septa with clamp connections, (Breitenbach)

Spore deposit:
white (Bigelow(5), Phillips, Breitenbach)

Notes:
Collections were examined from WA, OR, ID, QC, YT, AK, CO, MI, Sweden, and Switzerland, (Bigelow(5)). It was reported from NT (Bigelow(11)). There are collections from BC at the Pacific Forestry Centre and the University of British Columbia. The University of Washington has collections from AK, CA, Magadan Russia, and Macquarie Is. Australia. At least some Pacific Northwest records may be Loreleia rosella. Siegel(2) commented regarding Contumyces rosellus in the redwood coast area of CA (with Latin name italicized), "Confusion with Omphalina pyxidata seems to have been common in California for some time; we suspect that only C. rosellus occurs in our area."

EDIBILITY

unknown

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Clitocybe pyxidata (Fr.) Singer
Omphalia pyxidata (Fr.) P. Kumm.
Omphalina subhepatica (Batsch) Murrill