Summary:
Features include 1) small size, a viscid, pallid to "pinkish cinnamon" cap that is silky-fibrillose (cobwebby-tomentose) and appendiculate, 2) close, pale yellow gills that become pallid olive brownish, 3) an equal, often curved stem that is pale yellow at the top and in the lower part clay brown and woolly-tomentose or fibrillose-scaly. The description is derived from Smith(3) except where specified.

Cap:
1.5-2(3)cm across, convex, with or without a low obtuse umbo, expanding to flat or broadly convex; pallid to "pinkish cinnamon"; viscid but soon dry, silky-fibrillose, the surface fibrils glistening when dry, margin appendiculate with pinkish cinnamon fibrils, (Smith), whitish to yellow-ocherish; dull to satiny, arachnoid-tomentose, (Breitenbach)

Flesh:
very soft and watery cartilaginous; watery yellowish

Gills:
adnate with a slight tooth, close, 3 tiers of subgills, gills medium broad, narrowed slightly outward, sometimes slightly ventricose, some forked near stem; pale yellow ("cartridge-buff") becoming pallid olive brownish; edges even

Stem:
1.5-3cm x 0.1-0.3cm, equal, solid, often curved; at top pale clear yellow ("sea-foam-yellow"), clay brown in lower part; minutely woolly-tomentose or fibrillose-squamulose in lower part, base strigose [coarse-hairy]

Veil:
veil fragments hanging from cap margin

Odor:
faintly fragrant

Microscopic spores:
spores 7-9(10) x 4.5-5.5 microns, ovate to elliptic in face view, somewhat inequilateral to subelliptic in side view, smooth, germ pore present, some spores obscurely truncate, dull cinnamon in KOH, paler and finally pale reddish cinnamon in Melzer''s reagent, wall about 0.25 microns thick; basidia 4-spored, 18-24(26) x 7-9 microns, clavate, colorless to yellowish in KOH or Melzer''s reagent; pleurocystidia 28-40 x 8-14 microns, "subovate, broadly subfusoid utriform or fusoid-ventricose with a short neck and obtuse apex, thin-walled", in water mounts with amorphous debris over apex, "in KOH with some refractive particles in neck or an amorphous-refractive body filling the tip", "smooth, content yellowish and homogeneous in Melzer''s reagent", cheilocystidia 24-33 x 7-10 microns, "more frequently ovate to subfusoid than any other shape but generally like the pleurocystidia"; clamp connections present

Spore deposit:
dark brown (Breitenbach)

Notes:
Smith(3) examined collections from WA, OR, ID, ON, CA, MI, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia. Breitenbach(4) give the distribution as North America, Europe, and Asia.

EDIBILITY

"worthless" (Scates)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Dryophila scamba (Fr.) Kuehner & Romagn.
Naucoria cespitosa Murrill