Summary:
Features include 1) a dry, yellow to rusty brown cap with small, flat to upturned scales, 2) whitish gills that are soon yellow and then cinnamon from spores, the gills soon scalloped, 3) a cap-colored, often curved stem that is yellow and fibrillose becoming rusty brown from handling, 4) a pale yellow veil, 5) growth on wood, and 6) microscopic characters. Breitenbach(4) give Pholiota curvipes (Fr.) Quel. as a synonym of Pholiota tuberculosa (Schaeff.: Fr.) P. Kumm. and the online Species Fungorum, accessed November 12, 2017, follows that view, but some authors including Smith & Hesler in their North American monograph, M. Moser, and R. Singer regard them as separate. MycoBank, accessed the same day, is difficult to interpret. Breitenbach(4) say that P. curvipes is supposed to have a smaller fruitbody, a longer and bent stem without a basal bulb, spores that are 1 micron longer, and narrower cheilocystidia with the head only 3-9 microns across. In choosing the view that the two are synonymous, Breitenbach(4) follow Tjallingii-Beukers(1987) who mention collections including many fruitbodies in which the so-called distinguishing characters of the two species all occur together. The description is derived from Smith(3) for Pholiota curvipes except where noted.

Cap:
(1)2-5(6)cm across, obtuse to convex, margin incurved, becoming broadly convex to nearly flat, at times with low umbo; "brilliant yellow to ferruginous yellow or finally ferruginous"; dry, opaque, fibrillose, surface layer becoming broken up into small flat to upturned scales with center scales often small and inconspicuous, at times the extreme edge lacerate-fibrillose [torn and fibrillose] or with hanging veil remnants of the thin veil

Flesh:
thin, pliant; yellow

Gills:
adnate, moderately close to subdistant, broad; "whitish in small buttons but soon yellow and finally more or less cinnamon from the spores"; edges even but soon crenulate [finely scalloped]

Stem:
2-5(9)cm x 0.2-0.5(0.7)cm, equal, tubular, "curved or ascending"; colored much like cap, "apex clear yellow, floccose fibrillose, becoming more or less rusty brown from handling"

Veil:
pale yellow, fibrillose, forming an evanescent [fleeting] fibrillose zone where it breaks

Taste:
mild (Smith), mild to bitter in some varieties (Scates)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-8.5(9) x 3.5-4.5(5) microns, elliptic to ovate in face view, somewhat bean-shaped in side view, smooth, wall scarcely thickened, no germ pore, rusty brown in KOH; basidia 4-spored, 20-26 x 4.5-6 microns, "yellow in KOH or some with rusty brown content, yellow pigment diffusing in the mount from the hymenium"; pleurocystidia absent; cheilocystidia 24-42(60) x 3-9 microns, "cylindric to narrowly clavate to more or less capitate and flexuous down to the base, often in tufts, yellowish hyaline or with ochraceous to pale tawny content, thin-walled, smooth"; clamp connections present, (Smith), spores 7-9 x 4.4-5.2 microns (Breitenbach)

Spore deposit:
[presumably cinnamon]

Notes:
Smith(3) examined collections from ON, ME, MI, TN, and included NY and MO in the distribution. Pholiota curvipes is included in Pacific Northwest key of Scates(2). There is a collection from BC by O. Ceska at the University of British Columbia (her drawing included here). It was reported by Volk(3) from AK. Breitenbach(4) give distribution of Pholiota tuberculosa as North America and Europe.

EDIBILITY

worthless (Scates)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Pholiota curvipes (Fr.) Quel.