Summary:
Features include 1) a smooth, slightly viscid cap that is golden brown to yellowish, yellowish-buff, or creamy, 2) adnate to adnexed, close gills that are pallid then grayish then purplish to purplish black, 3) a rather short, non-viscid, whitish stem that is minutely scaly or cottony above the membranous, usually striate ring, and fibrillose to smooth below the ring, 4) growth in grassy areas, and 5) a dark purple-brown to blackish spore deposit.

Cap:
2-6cm across, convex to flat or slightly uplifted when old; golden brown to yellowish, yellowish buff, or creamy; usually smooth (but in one form with small orangish scales), slightly viscid when moist, (Arora), 2-4(6)cm across, hemispheric to convex, becoming nearly flat; "moist and slightly sticky to the touch at times, but not truly viscid except when quite moist", evenly pale yellow to ocher-yellow or occasionally the disc darker; bald but at times the surface breaking up to form scales, (Smith)

Flesh:
soft; white, (Arora), rather thick and soft; white, (Smith)

Gills:
adnate or at times adnexed when old, close; "pallid becoming grayish, then purplish or purple-gray to purple-black", (Arora), adnate or rounded, when old sinuate at times, close, moderately broad, ventricose; whitish but soon fuscous-violaceous and finally purple-black, edges white-fringed, (Smith)

Stem:
2-5cm x 0.3-0.6(1)cm, "usually rather short, more or less equal"; whitish; non-viscid, minutely scaly or cottony above ring, fibrillose to smooth in lower part, base often with white mycelial threads, (Arora), 2-4cm x 0.3-0.6(0.8)cm, white; minutely flocculose above the ring, fibrillose in lower part but becoming bald, (Smith)

Veil:
"membranous, white, forming a persistent, median to superior ring", "ring usually striate or grooved on upper surface and soon darkened by spores (but in one form not striate)", (Arora), ring "median to inferior, floccose-membranous, persistent, white, striate on upper surface", (Smith)

Odor:
faint and slightly pungent (Smith), almost odorless, somewhat herbaceous, (Breitenbach), slightly disagreeable (Miller)

Taste:
mild (Smith), mild, insipid, not distinctive, (Breitenbach)

Microscopic spores:
spores 7-11 x 4-5.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, chrysocystidia present on gills, (Arora), spores 7-9(11) x 4.5-5(6) microns, oval in face view, subelliptic in side view, obscurely angled in some, smooth, pale cinnamon-brown in KOH, apical germ pore very small; basidia 2-spored and 4-spored, 22-26 x 7-8 microns, colorless in KOH; pleurocystidia embedded in hymenium, 22-30 x 9-12 microns, mucronate and with a small, colorless, highly refractive body, cheilocystidia similar to pleurocystidia; cap cuticle of radially arranged hyphae 3-6 microns wide, their walls dull ocher in KOH from incrusting pigment, not truly gelatinous in KOH, clamp connections present, (Smith), spores 7.3-8.6 x 4-5 microns, elliptic, "smooth, yellow-brown, thick-walled", without distinct germ pore; basidia 4-spored, 18-25 x 6-7.5 microns, cylindric-clavate, without basal clamp connection; pleurocystidia 33-40 x 10-13 microns, similar to cheilocystidia, cheilocystidia modified as chrysocystidia, 25-35 x 8-12 microns, "clavate, fusiform, with an apical protrusion"; clamps mentioned for cap cuticle and not found on basidia, (Breitenbach)

Spore deposit:
dark purple-brown to blackish, (Arora), purple-brown (Breitenbach)

Notes:
Smith(15) indicated this species for ID, TX, and FL, and said it was "likely to occur anywhere in the United States and southern Canada". Ammirati(11) included it for BC, Murrill(6) for the northeastern US westward to WI and KS, and Desjardin(6) for CA. There are collections from BC, OR, and ON at the University of British Columbia. There are collections from WA, OR, MT, ON, and Germany at the University of Washington. Breitenbach(4) gave the distribution as North America, Europe, Asia, North Africa, and Australia.

EDIBILITY

dubious, poisonous according to some (Arora)