Summary:
Features include 1) a pale yellow, dry cap with conspicuous erect or recurved scales, 2) similar scales on the dry stem below the ring area, 3) crowded gills that often develop a greenish tinge when old, 4) a mild to garlic or onion odor, 5) growth in tufts on wood, and 6) a dull rusty brown spore deposit.

Cap:
3-10(15)cm across, obtuse or convex becoming broadly bell-shaped to slightly umbonate or flat, margin incurved at first; pale tan to straw, buff or pale yellow-brown, or when old darker yellow-brown or sometimes greenish yellow toward the margin, covered with a dense layer of upright or recurved [upcurved] scales that are often darker; dry, margin often fringed copiously with veil remnants, (Arora), 3-10(12)cm across, obtuse or convex becoming broadly bell-shaped with a conic umbo to nearly flat, margin incurved at first; pale yellow, or when old greenish yellow toward the margin, with a conspicuous layer of innate, recurved, or squarrose scales, which are '"cinnamon-buff" to "clay-color" and becoming dull tawny at maturity (light to dark yellowish brown)'; dry, margin at first conspicuously fringed with veil remnants, (Smith)

Flesh:
rather pliant; pale yellowish, (Arora), moderately thick and pliant; pale yellowish; in stem yellowish, (Smith)

Gills:
adnexed to adnate to slightly decurrent, crowded; "pale yellowish to buff or tinged gray, then often developing a greenish tinge" before finally becoming brown or dull rusty brown, (Arora); "bluntly adnate to somewhat arcuate and with a decurrent line or tooth, close to crowded, narrow"; ''pale yellowish when young, soon more or less sordid greenish yellow ("Isabella color"), and finally sordid rusty brown''; edges even, (Smith)

Stem:
4-12cm x 0.5-1.5cm, equal or narrowing downward, solid; colored like cap or becoming darker brown or reddish brown in lower part; smooth above the veil, covered with erect or recurved scales in lower part like those on the cap, (Arora), 4-10(12)cm x 0.4-1.2(1.5)cm, equal or nearly equal, at times with a long pointed base, solid; dry, covered up to the ring zone with recurved, pale tawny scales, (Smith)

Veil:
"membranous-fibrillose, forming a fragile, often torn, superior ring" on stem "or only leaving shreds on cap margin", (Arora), ring often evanescent [fleeting] but sometimes membranous and persistent (and then cap margin not conspicuously appendiculate), (Smith)

Odor:
none or garlic or onion (Smith), lemon, radish, onion, or skunk, (Schalkwijk-Barendsen), faint, unpleasant, radish, (Buczacki)

Taste:
mild or slightly rancid (Smith)

Microscopic spores:
spores (5)6-7.5(8) x 3.8-4.5 microns, elliptic to ovate in face view, obscurely inequilateral to bean-shaped in side view, smooth, apical germ pore distinct but apex not truncate, spores dull tawny in KOH and near cinnamon in Melzer''s reagent, wall about 0.25 microns thick; basidia 4-spored, (16)20-25 x 5-7 microns, clavate, colorless in KOH, yellowish in Melzer''s reagent; pleurocystidia of two types 1) chrysocystidia, (26)30-48 x (6)8-16 microns, "clavate to clavate-mucronate, apex papillate or drawn into a distinct projection, walls thin and smooth", refractive inclusion colorless in KOH and dextrinoid in Melzer''s reagent, 2) 30-45 x 9-14 microns, elliptic to oval-pedicellate or clavate, colorless and evenly refractive throughout in KOH, yellowish in Melzer''s reagent, walls thin and smooth, cheilocystidia 18-43 x 5-15 microns, "subfusoid, fusoid-ventricose, clavate or clavate-mucronate", some with highly refractive content; clamp connections present but not always abundant, (Smith), spores 5.5-9 x 3.5-5 microns, elliptic, smooth, with germ pore, (Arora)

Spore deposit:
dull rusty brown (Arora), red-brown (Buczacki)

Notes:
Smith(3) examined collections from ID, ON, CO, MI, MN, NM, NY, WY, Austria, France, Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland, and noted reports from MA, ME, CD, PA, and WI. There are collections from BC, AB, and YT at the University of British Columbia, and collections from WA, OR, AK, CO, NM, WY, and Finland at the University of Washington. It was reported by Volk(3) from AK, and Desjardin(6) from CA. Breitenbach(4) gave the distribution as North America, Europe, and Asia.

EDIBILITY

not recommended, some get severe stomach upset, (Arora)