Summary:
Features include 1) a cap that is reddish brown then sordid brown fading to pale brown, 2) adnate, close, broad gills that are dingy brown becoming chocolate brown, 3) a whitish to brownish stem that is deeply rooting in sand, and 4) microscopic characters.

Cap:
1.5-4cm across, convex with incurved margin, expanding to broadly convex or flat; "dull rusty brown, fading to tan but soon bleached to nearly white, when dried dingy ochraceous to pinkish cinnamon"; margin thinly fibrillose at first but soon bald, (Smith), 1.5-4cm across, hemispheric to paraboloid, then convex, finally flat; at first reddish brown, then dark sordid brown, drying pale brown, (Hansen), 1-2.5cm across, dirty clay-brownish; not striate, (Moser), up to 4cm across, reddish brown to dull gray-brown, yellowish ocher or dull brownish when dry; smooth to minutely roughened, margin fibrillose when young, (Courtecuisse)

Flesh:
thick and fleshy (for a Psathyrella), (Smith)

Gills:
adnate, depressed, close, broad, thin; "dingy brown becoming chocolate-brown and drying blackish", edges pallid; edges even, (Smith), dark brown, (Moser), not very close; "brownish gray then dark brown with crimson tones", edge whitish, or more or less red (marginate) in var. marginata, (Courtecuisse)

Stem:
3-7cm x 0.3-0.5cm, sunken in the sand for an additional 2-4cm, "relatively firm and fibrous, tubular", readily separable from cap; colored nearly as cap; unpolished, no veil remnants evident, (Smith), 4-7cm x 0.2-0.3cm, "cylindric or lower part somewhat thicker", "lower part submerged in sand, with adhering sand particles"; "sordid white to pale yellowish brown"; pruinose at top, (Hansen), whitish to brownish, deeply rooting in ground, about 4-5cm, (Moser), up to 8cm long and up to 0.4cm wide, cylindric, thickened in lower part with attached sand, (Courtecuisse)

Veil:
veil fleeting (Hansen)

Microscopic spores:
spores 9-14 x 6-8 microns, broadly elliptic to slightly ovate in face view, obscurely inequilateral to subelliptic in side view, smooth, obscurely truncate from germ pore, "in KOH coffee-bean brown becoming dark chocolate-color", in Melzer''s reagent reddish tawny, wall about 0.5 microns thick; basidia 4-spored, 25-32 x 9-12 microns, clavate, colorless in KOH; pleurocystidia scattered, 38-55 x 9-14 microns, "fusoid-ventricose, apex acute to subacute", wall thin, smooth, and colorless, cheilocystidia "similar to the pleurocystidia but varying to clavate or subglobose-pedicellate", colorless; clamp connections present, (Smith), spores 11-13.5 x 6.5-7.5 microns pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia generally ventricose to fusoid, (Hansen), spores 10-11 x 7 microns, (Moser)

Notes:
It was examined from CA and Algeria, and occurs in Europe, (Smith). It was reported from BC in Agriculture Canada 1983 Progress in Research 1982. Agric. Can., Ottawa, Ont. p. 72, photo (per Redhead(5)). There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia and collections from WA and AK at the University of Washington.

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