Summary:
Notable characters include varied colors, especially olive and green hues in earlier stages, and a purplish tinge to the brown spore deposit, (Smith(3)). Other features include 1) a viscid, scaly cap that is green, blue-green, olive or purple-brown to purple-gray, developing yellow or orange tints, 2) gills that are at first lilac or cream to pallid but soon gray-brown then olive purple brown with white-fringed edges, 3) a fibrous stem with scaly or patchy veil remnants below the ring zone and often tawny hairs at the base, the stem color light blue green, or pallid to yellowish on upper part, becoming reddish brown on lower part, 4) growth on wood, primarily hardwood, and 5) microscopic characters. The description is derived from Smith(3) except where noted.

Cap:
1.5-10cm across, obtuse to convex when young, with incurved margin, "expanding to broadly convex or obtusely umbonate"; color variable, pale grass-green, blue-green, dark olive or dark purplish drab to purple-gray, developing yellow hues, often mottled, often becoming dull orange to yellow on disc, the margin olivaceous; glutinous to viscid, cuticle separable, bald, but at first decorated with remnants of veil as creamy to avellaneous superficial squamules [fine scales], margin often appendiculate [with hanging veil remnants]

Flesh:
soft, moist, thick on disc, thin at margin; in cap whitish above and greenish below

Gills:
"adnexed to decurrent, often seceding, close to crowded, moderately broad"; at first lilac or cream to pallid, soon gray-brown (gray-fuscous or avellaneous to wood brown), finally dark purplish brown with an olive tone; edges white-fimbriate [white-fringed], (Smith), "attached, sometimes notched or somewhat decurrent as the cap margin becomes elevated", (Bessette)

Stem:
2-6(8)cm x 0.3-0.5(0.8)cm, often narrowing downward, fibrous, solid, finally hollow at times; light blue green or pallid to yellowish on top part, becoming reddish brown on lower part; "fairly copious veil remnants distributed over the lower part as squamules or patches" and these ending in a fibrillose to submembranous, greenish to dingy, fleeting ring, becoming bald in lower part when old; attached to substrate by a mat of tawny hairs, (Smith), often curved; more or less striate above the ring, (Bessette)

Veil:
hanging veil remnants on cap margin; fibrillose to somewhat membranous ring that is greenish to dingy, fleeting

Odor:
not distinctive

Taste:
not distinctive

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-7.5 x 3.5-4.5 microns, oblong to elliptic in face view, rarely ovate, mostly bean-shaped in side view, smooth, with minute apical germ pore, dark dull cinnamon in KOH, paler in Melzer''s reagent, wall about 0.25 microns thick; basidia 2-spored and 4-spored, 18-25 x 4.5-6 microns, subclavate, colorless to yellowish in Melzer''s reagent or in KOH, pleurocystidia 40-60(70) x 9-15 microns, "fusoid-ventricose, apex obtuse, wall thin and smooth", content homogeneous or containing some rod-like particles (in Melzer''s reagent), yellowish to amber-brown in KOH fading to colorless and then granular-colloidal in consistency, often with a slender pedicel, cheilocystidia 28-42 x 7-10(23) microns, broadly fusoid with obtuse apex to fusoid-ventricose and similar to pleurocystidia; clamp connections present

Spore deposit:
brown, with purplish tinge when moist, cinnamon brown when drier

Notes:
Smith(3) examined collections from OR, ON, FL, IN, MD, MI, NC, NY, PA, TN, TX, and VA, and mention reports from AL, LA, and WI. It was reported from BC as Flammula polychroa by G.A. Hardy in the Victoria Naturalist 9(4):37-9 1952, and there is a collection at the University of British Columbia.

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Flammula polychroa (Berk.) Sacc.
Gymnopilus polychrous (Berk.) Murrill
Pholiota appendiculata Peck
Pholiota ornella (Peck) Peck