Summary:
Features include 1) a grayish to purple gray cap that is appressed-fibrillose, at the margin sometimes appressed-fibrillose-scaly, 2) adnexed, pale dull purplish gills, 3) a stem that is fibrillose or somewhat scaly, and 4) growth on a Cystoderma mushroom which it transforms into stem-like gall. It is very rare in the Pacific Northwest. In 2010 Matheny(9) presented molecular evidence confirming Cystoderma amianthinum as a host for S. paradoxa, and this was confirmed by Griffith(1).

Cap:
1-3cm across, convex to broadly convex, sometimes with slightly depressed disc and sometimes with low broad umbo; buttons covered with brown granulose veil only loosely connected to cap tissue, the granules resembling those on Cystoderma amianthinum, the coating separating and sloughing off in early stages of cap expansion to reveal color of mature cap: pallid lilac to dark violaceous drab in wet fruitbodies, paler lilac when not soaked, "some when badly water soaked translucent-striate on margin and appearing atomate when dried out", (Smith(26)), 0.8-3.5cm across, convex to flat-convex, often with broad low umbo, sometimes flat or slightly depressed in center, margin slightly incurved at first, somewhat straight and lacerate later on; not hygrophanous, pallid lilac to dark violaceous drab or lilaceous gray, superficial fibrils becoming blackish when old; dry, appressed-fibrillose, at margin sometimes appressed-fibrillose-scaly, only slightly translucent-striate when very wet, (Bas), pallid lilac to violaceous drab; matted to appressed fibrillose centrally, (Redhead), gray to lilac-tinted or purplish-tinted when old beneath ocher-brown granulose coating, (Arora)

Flesh:
thin, soft, watery, "pale brownish drab" to grayish violaceous, in stem "clay color in lower two thirds, lilac to violaceous in upper third", (Smith(26)), in stem and cap grayish violaceous, grayish lilac or pale brownish drab, in sclerotium "pale with ochraceous brown outline", (Bas)

Gills:
"arcuate-adnate to subdecurrent or in some bluntly adnate becoming adnexed, with a slight tooth and this type sometimes becoming ventricose", distant to subdistant, broad; very pale dull purplish; edges even, (Smith(26)), "arcuate-adnate, subdecurrent, broadly adnate or adnexed", subdistant to distant, 10-24 reaching stem, 0-3 subgills between each pair, broad, thick, sometimes anastomosing, interveined; lilaceous-gray to brownish violaceous (slightly paler than cap); edges colored as faces; edges entire, (Bas)

Stem:
4-8cm x 0.5-0.6cm in apical third, widening downward to 0.6-0.8cm in lower two thirds; upper third pale lilac or violaceous, lower two thirds sheathed by a granulose "cinnamon buff" to "clay color" [Ridgway(1) colors] veil that breaks up to form more or less concentric rings of tufts or scales; lacerate-scaly and longitudinally striate in upper third, (Smith(26)), 0.8-2.5cm x 0.1-0.6cm, nearly equal; pale lilac to pale violaceous; fibrillose-subsquamulose; arising from stem-like to ventricose-fusiform, 2-6cm x 0.4-1.8cm, "ochraceous brown to tawny ochraceous brown, granular-warty, solid to hollow sclerotial body often confluent with other such sclerotia or inserted on a common basal body", "sometimes lower parts of sclerotium whitish felted", (Bas)

Veil:
young buttons entirely covered with a brownish ochraceous, granular-warty, membranous veil, leaving patches on young caps but mostly soon disappearing, (Bas)

Odor:
not distinctive (Smith(26)), "not distinctive according to Smith & Singer; intensively perfume-like when young, fetid with age according to Horak; obnoxious as in Lactarius porninsis according to Herink", (Bas, with Latin name italicized)

Taste:
not distinctive (Smith(26)), mild (Bas)

Microscopic spores:
spores (8.5)9-10(11) x 4.5-6 microns, elliptic, nonamyloid; also chlamydospores irregularly nearly round, smooth, pale yellow brown, (Redhead), spores (8.5)9-10(11) x 4.5-6 microns, elliptic, smooth, wall thin to very slightly thickened, spores colorless or nearly so in KOH, yellowish to pale tawny (slightly dextrinoid) in iodine; basidia 4-spored, 30-35 x 7.5-10 microns, clavate, colorless in KOH; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia not differentiated; clamp connections present at least in cap cuticle, (Smith(26)), spores (7.7)8.1-10.8 x 4.5-6.1 microns, elongate-elliptic, inamyloid to weakly dextrinoid, colorless to distinctly dingy, with moderately thickened colorless wall (probably double) and granular contents, with 2 nuclei, with small apiculus; basidia 4-spored, 34-43 x 7.5-10 microns, with clamp connection at base; cystidia absent; clamp connections abundant, (Bas)

Spore deposit:
white (Bas from Horak)

Notes:
It has been found at least in OR, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland, (Bas). It was found in Victoria, BC by Adolf and Oluna Ceska (collection at the University of British Columbia).

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Cystoderma paradoxicum A.H. Sm. & Singer
Dissoderma paradoxum (A.H. Sm. & Singer) Singer