Summary:
The persistent ring is unusual for a Psathyrella. Other features include a hygrophanous cap that is some shade of brown, thin fragile cap-colored flesh, adnate, close gills that are pallid becoming dark brown or purple brown, a white or pallid stem with scattered scales below the ring, growth under conifers and hardwoods, a deep brown to purplish brown spore deposit, and microscopic characters including abundant pointed pleurocystidia. It is common in the Pacific Northwest.

Cap:
(3)4-8(10)cm across, "obtusely conic to convex when young and the margin incurved", expanding to flat or broadly convex "but sometimes with a low broad umbo"; hygrophanous, 'dark avellaneous, pale sordid yellowish brown, to dark rusty brown or dark reddish brown (cinnamon-buff, "wood brown", "Mars brown" or "Mikado brown")', 'fading to pallid or tinged cinnamon buff or merely pallid'; moist, "at first covered with thin fibrillose patches of veil remnants or merely thinly fibrillose", soon bald, smooth but sometimes becoming finely wrinkled at least around disc, "more or less translucent-striate when moist", (Smith), 2.5-8(10)cm across, conical to convex becoming broadly convex to flat or umbonate when old; some shade of brown but sometimes fading when old; not viscid, "surface smooth or slightly wrinkled, with whitish veil remnant fibrils when very young", (Arora), "quite variable in color, from grayish brown to dark reddish brown", (Trudell)

Flesh:
very thin and fragile; colored more or less as cap surface, pallid to buff when old, (Smith), thin, fragile, (Arora)

Gills:
adnate but seceding readily, close, 46-54 reach stem, 2-3 tiers of subgills, moderately broad and more or less equal, 0.5-0.7cm; ''pale buff when young, soon dull purplish brown, sometimes distinctly vinaceous-brown ("vinaceous-fawn") from maturing spores, often drab and becoming "hair brown"'', edges white; edges even and floccose, (Smith), "adnate to adnexed or seceding, close"; "pallid becoming dark brown or purple-brown", (Arora)

Stem:
4-10cm x (0.4)0.5-1cm, evenly but only slightly enlarged downward, hollow and very fragile; white or pallid; sheathed up to ring "by a thin white fibrillose coating which often becomes broken into floccose scales and eventually may disappear completely", somewhat silky fibrillose-squamulose or merely silky above ring, (Smith), 4-10cm x 0.4-1cm, equal, fragile, hollow; pallid or white; with scattered whitish scales from veil below ring (Arora)

Veil:
ring "superior to median, white, usually persistent and membranous, white-floccose on underside, upper surface striate and silky", (Smith), membranous, white, forming a persistent, superior, ring usually striate and eventually darkened by spores, (Arora)

Odor:
not distinctive (Smith)

Taste:
not distinctive (Smith)

Microscopic spores:
spores (6.5)7-9 x 4-4.5(5) microns, elliptic to ovate in face view, obscurely inequilateral to subelliptic [somewhat elliptic] in side view, smooth, germ pore present but not readily evident on most spores, apex not truncate, cocoa-color in KOH becoming dark sepia or clouded with gray (but not dark chocolate color), reddish tawny in Melzer''s reagent, "wall about 0.3 microns thick"; basidia 4-spored, 16-18 x 7-9 microns (at base of gill up to 25 x 10 microns), clavate, colorless in KOH; pleurocystidia abundant, 40-60(72) x 10-17 microns, fusoid-ventricose with obtuse to subacute apex, wall thin, colorless and smooth, content not distinctive in KOH or Melzer''s reagent, cheilocystidia similar to pleurocystidia or saccate to balloon-shaped and 28-36 x 10-18 microns, thin-walled and readily collapsing; caulocystidia present; cap cuticle of colorless cells 10-30 microns wide and among them are clavate to pear-shaped upright cells 40-50 x 10-20 microns, the layer not truly hymeniform, the walls thin, smooth, and colorless, content not distinctive in either KOH or Melzer''s reagent; tramal hyphae pale vinaceous brown in KOH but fading; clamp connections present, (Smith), spores 7-9 x 4-5 microns, elliptic, smooth, (Arora)

Spore deposit:
dull vinaceous-brown to purplish brown, (Smith), deep brown to nearly black (Arora)

Notes:
Distribution includes WA, OR, ID, CA, (Smith), and BC (Bandoni). There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia. The University of Washington has collections from AK, WA, and OR. The type collection is from WA.

EDIBILITY

unknown (Arora)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Stropharia fragilis Kauffman
Stropharia longistriata Murrill