Summary:
Features include 1) a viscid, bald cap that is pale to dark vinaceous brown, 2) close white gills that become grayish brown, 3) a stem that is appressed-fibrillose above the membranous ring and scurfy below the ring, 4) growth on debris under conifers, 5) a dark yellow brown spore deposit, and 6) microscopic characters. The description derived (except where noted) from Smith(3).
Smith(3) examined collections from WA, OR, and CA. There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia (as Pholiota and as Stropharia).
Cap:
(2)4-8cm across, broadly convex when young, may expand to slightly umbonate or flat; pale to dark vinaceous brown, margin paler, umbo slightly darker; bald, viscid, "smooth or somewhat papillate to rugulose from wrinkling of the pellicle"
Flesh:
thick on disc, gradually thinner to the margin, soft, pliant; white or whitish
Gills:
bluntly adnate, with a decurrent tooth, or slightly depressed around stem, "close or nearly so, moderately broad"; white becoming dark avellaneous ("wood-brown" - Ridgway(1) color); edges white; edges crenate [scalloped]
Stem:
5-10cm x 0.4-1cm, equal, hollow; "white and appressed-fibrillose or floccose" above the ring, the lower part discolored, or more rarely yellowish; scurfy [tiny flakes] below ring, but base nearly bald, base usually with numerous white rhizomorphs
Veil:
"more or less median, broad, membranous, white, persistent" ring, that is striate on upper surface and white floccose on lower surface
Odor:
fungus-like
Microscopic spores:
spores 7-9 x 4-5.5 microns, elliptic to ovate in face view, subelliptic [somewhat elliptic] to obscurely inequilateral in side view, "germ pore very minute (apex not truncate), in KOH dull cinnamon, in Melzer''s about the same"; basidia 4-spored, 25-32 x 6-8 microns, clavate, colorless in KOH, yellowish in Melzer''s reagent; pleurocystidia [chrysocystidia] abundant, 30-50(60) x 5-12 microns, clavate to mucronate, wall thin, smooth, and colorless, "content as revived in KOH coagulated into a refractive amorphous mass usually resting in upper third of cystidium, in Melzer''s reagent this mass ochraceous to orange-brown to dull red", cheilocystidia 20-56 x 3-7 microns, "filamentose-subcapitate, pedicel flexuous, smooth, thin-walled, content homogeneous"; all hyphae inamyloid; clamp connections present
Spore deposit:
"cinnamon-brown" [Ridgway(1) color] (dark yellow brown)
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