Summary:
No other large, brown-spored mushroom is golden-brown to pale orange with a granulose coating on both the cap and stem. Features include 1) an orange-ochraceous dry cap that is granulose to unpolished and often with hanging veil remnants, 2) close, pallid gills that become cap-colored, 3) a cap-colored, dry stem that is bald above a membranous, funnel-shaped ring and sheathed below the ring with a covering similar to the cap covering, 4) a mild to slightly pungent odor, 5) a light yellow-brown to orange-buff spore deposit, and 6) microscopic characters.

Cap:
6-20(30)cm across, obtuse to convex becoming broadly convex, flat, or broadly umbonate; "orange to orange-tan, tawny-yellow, or golden brown", often becoming somewhat paler when old; dry, surface covered with granules that wear away with age, hanging veil remnants along edge, (Arora), 7-20(30)cm across, convex to obtusely bell-shaped when young, expanding to obtusely umbonate or nearly flat finally; orange-buff to orange-ochraceous in buttons, usually paler when old, rarely merely ochraceous; dry, granulose to unpolished (when old when most of the veil particles have weathered away); margin often with hanging veil remnants, (Smith)

Flesh:
thick; pallid or yellowish, (Arora), moderately thick in disc, firm; pallid, unchanging, in stem whitish or somewhat streaked with orange down center, (Smith)

Gills:
"adnate to notched or free, close"; "pallid or pale yellowish becoming tawny to orange-brown", (Arora), "adnate or at times with a short decurrent tooth", close, moderately broad; pallid in buttons, when mature becoming more or less colored as cap or darker, edges colored as faces; edges entire, (Smith)

Stem:
5-15(25)cm x (1)2-4(6)cm, widening toward base; orange to buff or colored as cap, granules on surface extending up to an including the underside of the ring, (Arora), 10-15(25)cm x (1.5)3-5(6)cm, enlarging downward to subclavate [somewhat club-shaped], stuffed becoming hollow; more or less colored as cap though sometimes darker at top; dry, unpolished, smooth and bald above ring, but below ring sheathed with covering similar to that of cap, base "white mycelioid and with a few short white poorly developed rhizomorphs", (Smith)

Veil:
membranous, color like cap, sheathing the stem and breaking to form a superior, flaring or funnel-like ring which eventually collapses or becomes skirt-like, "ring smooth on upper surface and granulose on underside", (Arora), ring "flaring, membranous, persistent to mid-maturity, finally becoming pendulous and disappearing in extreme age"; peronate sheath separable to base of stem, (Smith)

Odor:
strong, aromatic, (Lincoff(1)), "mild to slightly pungent", (Smith), mild (Miller(14))

Taste:
"mild to slightly astringent" (Smith), mild (Miller(14))

Microscopic spores:
spores 10-14 x 5-6 microns, elliptic, smooth to minutely rough, (Arora), spores 10.7-13(14) x 5-6 microns, somewhat elliptic in face view, somewhat inequilateral in side view, smooth or some with minute markings, with one large central oil droplet, wall thin and many spores collapsing, no germ pore evident; basidia usually 4-spored, clavate, thin-walled, colorless to pale brownish in KOH, "occasionally with a highly refractive body as revived in KOH"; pleurocystidia absent or rarely clavate-mucronate and brownish in KOH, 26-30 x 7.5-8.5 microns, cheilocystidia absent; clamp connections present, (Smith)

Spore deposit:
"pale yellow-brown to orange-buff", (Arora), "light yellow-brown to orange-buff", (Smith)

Notes:
Smith(3) examined collections from BC, WA, and AK. Redhead(6) examined collections from BC, WA, ID, AB, AK, and Finland, and gives range including also Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Russia, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Japan. It is widely distributed in North America (Phillips).

EDIBILITY

questionable, mildly poisonous to some, (Arora)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Lepiota pyrenacea Quel.
Pholiota aurea (Fr.) P. Kumm.
Togaria aurea (Fr.) W.G. Sm.