Summary:
Pleurocybella porrigens is distinguished by smooth, pliant, white caps with a shelf-like habit on conifer wood, and narrow, crowded, white or yellowish gills. The description is derived from Arora(1) except where noted. It is common in the Pacific Northwest.

Cap:
4-8(10)cm wide, projecting 2-5cm, fan-shaped to tongue-shaped or petal-shaped, margin at first incurved, often lobed or wavy when older; pure white to milky white, but sometimes creamy when old; smooth, not viscid

Flesh:
very thin, pliant; white

Gills:
decurrent if stem present, crowded, thin, narrow; white or yellowish

Stem:
"absent or present only as a narrowed, stubby white base"

Veil:
absent

Odor:
mild (Arora), pleasant (Phillips)

Taste:
mild (Arora), pleasant (Phillips)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-7 x 5-6 microns, nearly round, smooth, inamyloid, (Arora), spores 5.1-7.3 x 4.5-6.7 microns, nearly round, smooth, iodine negative, colorless, with droplets; basidia 4-spored, 30-36 x 5.5-7.5 microns, cylindric-clavate, with basal clamp; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia not seen; clamps mentioned for cap cuticle and basidia, (Breitenbach)

Spore deposit:
white (Arora), whitish (Breitenbach)

Notes:
There are collections at the University of British Colombia from BC and at the University of Washington from WA, OR, and AK. It has been reported from ID by Andrew Parker, pers. comm., from CA by Arora, and is also found elsewhere in North America. Breitenbach(3) give the distribution as North America, Europe, and Asia.

EDIBILITY

In the past Pleurocybella porrigens was generally considered edible, but in 2004 there were 17 deaths in Japan: most or all deaths occurred in people who had kidney disorders and the average age was 70: they died of an acute brain condition; another person on kidney dialysis died in 2009 from this species, (Beug(1) and M. Beug pers. comm.).

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Phyllotus porrigens (Pers.) P. Karst.
Pleurotellus porrigens (Pers.) P. Kumm.
Pleurotus porrigens (Pers.) Kuehner & Romagn.