Summary:
Stropharia rugosoannulata is recognized by a wine-red to tan cap, a grooved often segmented or claw-like ring, growth on wood chips, mulch, straw, lawns, gardens, and other cultivated areas, and a purple-black spore deposit. There is a white form pictured in Phillips(1). The description is derived from Arora(1) except where noted.

Cap:
4-15(20)cm across, "obtusely bell-shaped or convex" becoming broadly umbonate to flat; color variable, wine-red to purple-brown to reddish brown when fresh, but fading to tan, straw, or even grayish as it ages; "smooth, slightly viscid or dry", (Arora), "dark wine-brown when young, irregularly covered with whitish veil remnants, later increasingly paler to ocher-brownish and with fine, wine-reddish fibrils", almost cream-colored when old, (Breitenbach), cracking when old (Lincoff(2))

Flesh:
thick, fairly firm; white

Gills:
"adnate or notched" (but sometimes becoming free when old), crowded; "at first whitish but soon gray and finally purple-gray to purple-black with whitish edges"

Stem:
7-12(25)cm x 1-3(7)cm, "often enlarged at base"; white or discoloring yellowish to brownish when old, "base often with white mycelial threads attached"

Veil:
"membranous, white", forming thick, persistent superior ring on stem that is soon blackened by spores, ring grooved or striate on upper surface and often split radially into segments

Odor:
pleasant (Phillips), pleasant, faintly farinaceous, (Miller), "herbaceous-raphanoid (like cut grass), with a pleasant aromatic component", (Breitenbach)

Taste:
pleasant (Phillips), "mild, faintly raphanoid, somewhat astringent", (Breitenbach)

Microscopic spores:
spores 10-15 x 6-9 microns, elliptic, smooth; chrysocystidia present on gills, (Arora), spores 9.4-12.3 x 7.1-8.9 microns, "elliptic-ovate, smooth, ocher-brown, thick-walled, with a germ pore"; basidia 4-spored, 26-33 x 8-9.5 microns, cylindric-clavate, without basal clamp connection; cheilocystidia "(chrysocystidia?) in part with contents not changing color in KOH, vesicular, ventricose, clavate, or lageniform, with an apical protrusion", 30-45 x 11-22 microns, pleurocystidia 28-50 x 10-13 microns, fusiform-ventricose, some also with contents not changing color in KOH; cap cuticle of periclinal hyphae 5-13 microns across, brown-pigmented; clamp connections on some septa in cap cuticle, (Breitenbach)

Spore deposit:
deep purple-brown to black (Arora), dark brownish violet (Breitenbach)

Notes:
It has been found at least in WA (Stuntz), and MA (Murrill). It is common in New England. There are collections from BC at the Pacific Forestry Centre and the University of British Columbia. Breitenbach(4) gave the distribution as North America, Europe, and Asia.

EDIBILITY

yes